Florida OSHA CPR AED First Aid Classes – In house training or hire a Professional Expert Instructor?

Today I received an e-mail and the headline read "Become An Authorized Emergency Care Instructor." They indicate Teaching CPR/First Aid is a learner centered course designed to develop effective First Aid, CPR and AED Instructors. Lately I have seen several companies advertising "train the trainer" classes and I wanted to share my thoughts on this topic. I realize with the down economy this can be viewed as a great revenue source for the company offering the training classes. The training company makes money and suggests the business sending their employee trainer can save money by offering the classes in house. It sounds like a win win for everyone. That is until you realize that safety has been compromised. At first you won't realize this. In fact, you probably will not notice until an employee or customer is sick, injured or dies and you get the letter from their lawyer.

According to the e-mail the course goals are as follows: How to use instructor manual, student manuals and visual aids, How to actively involve students in course, How to motivate adult learners, How to deal effectively with challenging participants, How to give succinct directions, How to give clear demonstrations, How to troubleshoot/correct student skill errors, Practice in delivering skill demonstrations and presentations

Notice how little time is spent on actually teaching the instructor how to really learn this material so they can teach others. It´s a course designed to sell you books and videos and teach the "instructor" to read from a book, show movies and power point slides. The above company promises to make you an expert instructor in jut 2 short days for a Special Member Price of $325.00. If you believe that, I have a bridge I would like to sell you.

Consider these questions

1.) If I was never in the pool before, am I qualified to teach swimming?

2.) If I only played video golf, should I be teaching real golf?

3.) How about flying an airplane - would you take lessons from a pilot that never flew a real airplane before?

4.) Do you think it´s wise to spend $325 to send someone from your company to attend a 2 day seminar that teaches them how to teach others emergency medical treatment? Assuming that your staff member does not have formal education, experience, state licenses and insurance this is a major mistake.

Would you trust a surgeon that never actually operated on a real person? - CPR AED and First Aid should only be taught by people with real world, CPR AED and First Aid experience. Trainers that have no real world knowledge of a topic can't adequately describe what it feels like to press on the human body, can't adequately describe what's will happen during the process and will not be able to honestly answer questions or give advice on something they have never done.

If you are not an expert don't teach. If you do not have formal education and experience in the area you are teaching - don't teach. Teaching without the proper qualifications is a lawsuit waiting to happen. In today's business community lawyers are suing everyone, including the CPR trainer and the CPR school. If one of your "CPR AED First Aid" instructors teaches a class to a student and they offer medical assistance to a person that dies or is seriously injured I believe it would be a slam dunk for the lawyer. In a deposition they ask how many times have you performed CPR on a real person? To the employee - Who taught you? To the instructor.....the same question? How about their instructor? Same question? You see where this is going. You want only experts teaching life saving techniques.

Can anyone teach CPR AED and First Aid? This is a common mistake I often see. In an effort to reduce costs, managers either go with the low bid or attempt to do the training in house. You should never cut costs on life saving training or life saving equipment. Having a fire suppression installation class taught by your Human Resources department is probably not a great idea and may result in property loss. Having your staff teach life saving skills without the proper qualifications, which include real world on the job experience, classroom time, continuing education and state certification could result in injury, death and a very large lawsuit. You don´t let your computer guys test and inspect companies fire extinguishers? The answer is no, you do not. Fire suppression systems and fire extinguishers are designed to save property. CPR AED and first aid classes are designed to save lives. Given the choice between saving lives or saving property, which in your opinion is more important and which do you think could result in the greatest liability? Make certain your instructor is a full time instructor that has actually performed CPR and used AEDs in real life on real people. Having people teach CPR that have never done CPR on real people is like taking swimming lessons from a guy that has never really been in the pool before. Bottom line – always hire a full time professional.

The next time you go to a nice hotel and valet park your car. Ask the valet who he works for. Most often the valets are not hotel employees. Why? Because the hotel does not want the liability associated with possible damage to a customers property. Learn from this practice and do not bring large risks, such as safety training in house as it will cost you more in the end.

What sets us apart from the others

 Our lead instructor is a Florida licensed EMT and holds a Florida 220 license (Insurance - Risk Management).

 We carry $2,000,000.00 in liability insurance to protect our clients.

 A major difference, our instructors have actually performed CPR, First Aid and used AEDs on real people. Not all instructors have real world CPR First Aid AED experience. Many simply read about CPR and First Aid in a book. We believe real world experience makes for a better instructor and believe you will too.

 Our CPR, First Aid and AED classes are both educational and fun. Our philosophy is that learning should be fun. We feel that if you have fun, laugh and the CPR class is interesting you will enjoy yourself and will absorb and retain the material better.

With the current economy money is tight and we need to save money. How can we reduce our CPR AED and First Aid costs without reducing safety? The above company advertising the train the trainer program for $325 never mentions that you will need to purchase books, manikins, DVDs, certification cards and other CPR AED and First Aid equipment for your employees. When you factor in the total cost per student once you send someone to take the class, purchase all of the above safety equipment, purchase the books, cards and liability insurance, then calculate the man hours your staff member will invest getting trained, offering the training and maintaining the course records it will most likely cost you more. There is a lot more to offering a CPR AED and First Aid certification class than watching a video and pressing on a manikin. My advice, if you want to save money on your CPR AED and First Aid classes call us toll free at 877-6-AED-CPR or e-mail me Keith@TheCPRschool.com. We offer discounts for larger groups. The more students we train for your company, the lower the cost per person.

My final thought if you were the CEO or safety manager of a company and found that your safety training was inadequate, an employee died on the job and the family filed a lawsuit. When shopping for a trial lawyer to defend you against this multi-million dollar lawsuit and public relations nightmare, would you want your trial lawyer to have trained under the best trail lawyers in the business or would you trust a lawyer that was taught by a non-lawyer with no trial experience at a 2 day seminar?

Keith Murray, owner of The CPR School, LLC is a licensed Florida Firefighter EMT as well as a Florida licensed risk management insurance agent. Keith holds a masters degree in business administration (MBA) and frequently consults with Florida business owners and safety managers regarding safety and risk management issues. The CPR School is a mobile training company that provides onsite CPR, AED First Aid Safety training classes for businesses, professional groups and schools throughout Florida. In addition to safety training The CPR School sells and services AEDs - automated external defibrillators as well as provides AED Program Management & AED Maintenance. Contact The CPR School at 877-6-AED-CPR or Keith@TheCPRschool.com or on the web at www.TheCPRSchool.com