First Aid & CPR Workshops

No workshop on this page certifies anyone. Everyone who finishes receives a Coast2Coast Certificate of Participation, which records the topics you practiced and the date you practiced them. If you need a card an employer will accept, our first aid classes are a separate booking.

A first aid class ends in a certificate you can hand an employer; a workshop ends in a record of what you practiced. What a class adds is a written exam, a skills test, and the American Red Cross first aid training standard behind the certificate.

Know Your Baby and Baby Emergency Preparedness each run three hours. Build Your Own runs as long as the topics you pick, so a group choosing two subjects finishes well before a group choosing six. Tell us your list and we will tell you the length before you commit.

Book Know Your Baby for everyday care and Baby Emergency Preparedness for choking and CPR. Parents who want both usually take them on separate evenings rather than back to back, because three hours of practice is about as much as anyone absorbs in one sitting.

No. A Certificate of Participation meets no regulatory requirement, OSHA included. An employer covered by OSHA needs someone trained to render first aid, and what satisfies that is first aid training and certification with a skills test behind it. Book a certification class and keep the workshop as extra practice.

Every workshop starts from the basics. You do not need to have taken a course before, and plenty of people in the room have never touched a manikin. Instructors pitch the session to whoever turns up, which is easier to do in three hours than in a full day.

A full class works through the whole first aid syllabus rather than a few topics. Injuries and wound care techniques include controlling life-threatening bleeding and treating burns, and the class goes on through broken bones, head and spinal injuries, severe allergic reactions and poisons. Training may include handling environmental emergencies like heat stroke and frostbite. Emergency response basics covered include assessing scene safety and contacting emergency services, and the class ends in a graded skills test. A workshop goes deep on a few things; a class goes wide and certifies you.

First Aid certification is valid for two years before renewal, and CPR certification expires on the same two-year cycle. That clock applies to the certification classes, not to a Certificate of Participation, which carries no expiry because it certifies nothing. Recertification courses refresh skills and update techniques against the current guidelines, and the American Red Cross also runs shortened review courses for a card that is still valid and close to expiring.

American Red Cross offers first aid training for children and adults in the same course. Adult and Pediatric First Aid/CPR/AED teaches both age groups together, so a parent who wants a certificate rather than a workshop books once instead of twice. The baby workshops on this page stay narrower on purpose — infants and small children only, in three hours.

Yes — Build Your Own exists for exactly that. You choose the topics, we build the training around them, and the session runs at your own site or at one of our California facilities. Daycares, camps, sports clubs and office teams book these most often.

Send an inquiry and we will come back with dates. There is no public calendar for the workshops, so tell us which one you want and roughly how many people, and we will find a session that fits. Call 1-866-291-9121 if you would rather work it out on the phone.