First Aid Techniques: National Curriculum

Mark Hunter Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Julie Hilling]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Absolutely, every school leaver a life saver is what we should be aiming for.

This Government—it may be my Government in two months’ time—have a chance to make a real difference. We want the national curriculum to reflect the essential knowledge and understanding that pupils should be expected to have to enable them to take their place as an educated member of society. Knowing how to save a life would be absolutely in keeping with that aspiration. Knowing how to save the life of a family member or a member of the public would enable children to have an impact on the health of society. Ensuring that life-saving skills were taught in schools would provide the chance to instil in all children how valuable life is and how important it is to be a good citizen.

[Mark Hunter (Cheadle) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She is making a passionate case for something she clearly believes in deeply. Does she accept that this is part of a wider awareness that is needed among the community at large to raise the profile of first aid issues, not only in schools and in the workplace, but across the spectrum, because there are still not enough people who know what to do in an emergency of the kind that she has talked about? If I may, I will acknowledge the support she gave to my campaign for Millie’s Trust, which wants trained paediatric first aid nurses in nursery schools to be a statutory requirement.

[Julie Hilling]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I congratulate him on Millie’s campaign, because it is absolutely crucial that people do not die when they could be saved. Currently, 7% of the population know how to save a life. Surely we could do much better.

We could join other countries such as France, Denmark and Norway, where emergency life support skills are already part of the curriculum, as they are in various states in Australia and in 36 states in America. In Seattle, children have to learn first aid skills before they can graduate from school, and it is also part of the driving licence requirement. More than half of the population in Seattle is now trained in emergency life support, so people are rarely more than 12 feet away from somebody who could save their life.

However, it is not enough to learn CPR. Michelle, a staff member at Rivington and Blackrod high school in my constituency, knew what to do when her dad had a cardiac arrest. She and others did CPR for a long time before the ambulance arrived far too late to make any difference. Had there been an automatic external defibrillator, they might have been able to shock his heart back into rhythm, but there was not. That is why I applaud the work of the Bolton implantable cardiac defibrillator support group, who work so hard to raise funds and have just donated their 67th defibrillator.

The chain of survival is just that—a chain of action that needs to be undertaken for a person to survive a cardiac arrest. It needs someone to call for help, someone to do CPR, a defibrillator and someone confident enough to use it, and an ambulance to take the person to hospital for treatment. That is why children need to learn how to do CPR and how to use a defibrillator.

The British Heart Foundation is giving Resusci Annies—the resuscitation dolls—to high schools and has produced a CD that teaches those skills in just half an hour, but we should be more ambitious. It is essential that we also teach children to deal with choking and bleeding and to put somebody in the recovery position. Nine out of ten 11 to 16-year-olds have been confronted with a medical emergency, often when no adults are around. Even when there are adults, it is often the child or young person who takes control and, for instance, delivers back blows to stop someone choking or deals with a serious bleed.

According to research by St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross, only 7% of the UK population have the skills and the confidence to carry out basic first aid in an emergency, but 91% of pupils want to learn first aid at school; 98% of parents want first aid on the curriculum; and 96% of teachers think it is important for students to learn first aid. Ninety-five per cent of teachers agree that first aid teaching develops the general confidence and optimism of young people, yet only 21% of our schools equip young people with first aid skills.