You’re required to be First Aid and CPR/AED certified for your job, but do you know what the different levels of First Aid and CPR entail?
Continue readingWhat are the Different Levels of First Aid & CPR/AED?
How Long is First Aid and CPR Valid in Ontario?
You’re interested in becoming First Aid and CPR certified, but how long is First Aid and CPR valid for in Ontario? Always keep your certificate up-to-date!
Continue readingWhy Don’t you Offer the CPR HCP Course?
Recently, we have received many questions asking us if we provide CPR-HCP courses. Many professions require employees to be CPR and First Aid certified. Each job title requires you to attain a specific certificate, so it is important you sign up for the correct course(s). We recommend that you speak to your employer about which course you are required to take.
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Why don’t we offer CPR-HCP?
As of April, the Canadian Red Cross has replaced CPR-HCP with Basic Life Support (BLS) courses. BLS is still the necessary course designed for healthcare providers, but now covers more information and goes into further detail about each topic that is covered. What was once a one hour course is now a four hour course with the option to include additional topics such as Airway Management and Oxygen Therapy.
Is BLS the same as CRP-HCP? In short, no, but it is the newly required course for healthcare providers now.
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Why has HCP been replaced by BLS?
There are a couple reasons why HCP has been replaced by BLS. One reason is to create a clear distinction from all public CPR courses. Heathcare providers require specific training due to the professional environment they work in. The BLS course focuses on high-performance resuscitation in a team environment which is much different from normal CPR courses.
Another reason HCP has been replaced by BLS is because of the course content. Originally, HCP covered limited topics over a short duration. There was not enough time or information for students to learn important, life-saving skills for their jobs. BLS takes place over four hours and covers more detail about the topics learned in HCP while also teaching additional skills.
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Who needs a BLS certificate?
Those who need a BLS certificate are typically those who work in a hospital setting such as nurses and medical doctors. Other professions, such as dentists, may require the BLS certificate as well, but you would need to check with your employer to confirm.
Master the Essentials of Basic Life Support!
Join our BLS course at Coast2Coast and learn critical skills that can save lives. Our experienced instructors will guide you through hands-on training, ensuring you’re prepared to respond in emergencies.
Is the BLS certificate valid nationally?
Yes. BLS certificates issued by the Canadian Red Cross are valid throughout Canada.
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How do I renew my BLS certificate?
BLS is a certificate that must be renewed every year. Course materials are always changing, so it is important to keep your knowledge up to date. Healthcare providers must be able to fulfill their duties in the workplace, so keeping your certificate up-to-date is crucial.
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Coast2Coast BLS Course
Coast2Coast offers many morning and evening BLS courses guaranteed to fit your schedule. Each course is taught by a highly trained Canadian Red Cross instructor. Once you complete the course and pass the multiple choice exam with a 75% score or higher, you will receive your certificate from the Canadian Red Cross. All certificates will be processed within 5-10 business days online.
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Many of those who require the BLS certificate may also need Standard First Aid and CPR Level C. This is a separate course that cannot be taken on the same day as BLS. Coast2Coast does offer a bundle deal for those who require both certifications. While signing up for Standard First Aid and CPR-C, select the option for a bundle deal. You will receive a special discount code you can apply while signing up for your BLS course.
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If you have any questions while signing up for a course, please contact us.
Register for First Aid Training
Register today for a First Aid Training course and learn how to deal with emergencies and keep your loved ones safe! Check out our facilities and book your spot now.
Should Children Learn CPR?
The story of two boys saving their grandma from death using CPR skills their mother taught them is an amazing feature, and further proves that even with just a little training, all can save lives no matter what age or size.
Continue readingWhat To Do If Your Pets are not Breathing?
Every public institution you send your child to, whether it is a school, after-school program, club sport, religious centre, or daycare; you want to know that they are safe at all times. With the recent story of a young boy choking to death in a mosque in England, it has many of us worried that not everyone who is looking after our children are CPR/AED or First Aid trained.
There were several reasons why this result ended morbidly, which included not knowing how to use a defibrillator, or the location of one, volunteers and staff not being trained in emergency first aid, but most of all, not knowing how to respond to infants and children in choking and breathing emergencies.
These stories are somber to read, but they must be reminders for those working with children to be updated in their CPR and first-aid knowledge, as well as being aware of the defibrillator locations in all facilities.
Although child care workers are required to have CPR and First-Aid training, there are many establishments we send our children to where volunteers and staff do not have the requirements to be first aid certified. Your child’s safety is the number one priority; it is up to you to make sure that whoever is in care of your son, daughter, or relative is certified in the appropriate way.
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The first action is to know the whereabouts of the facilities’ defibrillator, or commonly known as an AED. The device is used to deliver electrical currents through the heart, via the defibrillation pads attached to the machine. Survival rates go from 5% with only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to 75% with an automatic external defibrillator.
To learn more about what defib’s are, check out our blog post where we explain how to use one and where they are usually located.It is essential to be comfortable using a defibrillator in an emergency. In all our First-Aid and CPR courses at Coast2Coast, we provide the knowledge and practice of how to use a AED on infants, children, and adults (depending on your level of choice).
For most public centres, the AED would be located in the front foyer or staff room. When touring a new place, such as a church or sports facility, it is important to find out where the facility AED is located, and which staff members and volunteers know of its location, and how to use it.
Along with knowing about the facility’s AED location, it is also beneficial to find out how many first-aid kits are in the building, and where exactly they are located. Let your child know in what rooms or who has them, as he or she might be in a scenario where it is up to them to find one if there is no other supervisor around.
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As well as being trained in AED use, all staff workers and volunteers with children should be trained in Emergency First-Aid (EFA). Coast2Coast offers the EFA in a one day course that covers skills such as CPR, wound care, and emergency situations. We also offer our EFA course in an online blended curriculum, which allows the participant to study theory at home, and practice the skills in class for half the day.
Emergency first-aid covers many situations that your child may face, such as heat exhaustion, burns, choking, and intense bleeding. As well as your child’s caretaker, it is invaluable as a parent or guardian to obtain first aid training as well. Moreover, it gives you some skills that might be useful to save your pet’s life.
Last but not least, those in care of children should be fully educated in reacting and saving a child or infant from choking or breathing emergencies. Like many cases such as the young boy at the beginning of this blog, they rely on adults to help them when they are in pain and danger.
If a child does begin to choke, begin CPR immediately with thirty compressions, checking the airway, and repeating for two minutes. If you are the only person around, call 911. If there is a child or adult around, have them call 911 and find the AED while you are with the child in need.
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For children and infants, chest compressions are performed differently, as they only need two fingers (infants), or pressing down two inches (child). Make sure the neck is not tilted back too far for babies, as you do not want to cause head or neck injury as well. Continue doing compressions and checking for breathing until emergency medical responders come. When checking for breathing, and if no air is being released, put your mouth over the nose and mouth (infant) or cover the mouth with your mouth and hold the nose (child) to do rescue breathing.
These methods can be properly taught through our CPR/AED courses, especially in our level C course, where we show the exact techniques one must do for a baby or kid that is choking. Our classes go through step-by-step instructions and show the exact techniques for every situation possible.
Our kids are our most precious treasures, and we want them to feel safe and protected at all times. With their teachers, caregivers, youth group leaders, and any other worker or volunteer that is under their care, we hope that in any emergency situation they can preserve life and not cause a fatality because of their ignorance to first aid and CPR training.
With the school year coming up, youngsters all around will begin new activities and sports for enrichment purposes. Talk about first-aid and CPR experience when registering your child, and know that Coast2Coast First Aid is here for all your training needs!
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Register for First Aid Training
Register today for a First Aid Training course and learn how to deal with emergencies and keep your loved ones safe! Check out our facilities and book your spot now.
How Knowing CPR Can Save Lives?
 More than 300 thousand people die because of cardiac arrest every year. The risk of heart diseases is higher in senior citizens. 70% of adults above the age of 60 have some kind of cardiac problem. There are different types of health issues that can be the cause of cardiac arrest. There are also other social factors that can lead to this situation of life or death. If people are properly trained, knowing CPR can help save lives. Trained individuals would be ready to take immediate action when required. Coast2coast First Aid & Aquatics offers all the necessary First Aid & CPR Courses in Toronto. Here are some reasons why knowing CPR can be helpful.
CPR can help save lives
        A person’s brain and organs can die within minutes when the cardiac arrest occurs. Once the heart stops pumping the blood, brain death will only take 4 to 6 minutes. Taking quick action, performing CPR on the person suffering from cardiac arrest can help to pump blood in the body. It might take professionals sometime to arrive at the scene. If you will perform CPR immediately, organs of the body including brain will get oxygen and so survival, chances will increase. The chances of survival will be doubled if you will perform CPR within 2 minutes of cardiac arrest.
CPR training is beneficial for everyone
          More than 90% of the people who die every year due to cardiac arrest do not get immediate help. We at our Toronto First Aid & CPR training facility help you learn all the right skills. The survival chances could be improved if everyone knew how to perform CPR. Even in the younger individuals risk of cardiac arrest has increased because of a sedentary lifestyle and poor dietary habits. People of all age groups should have complete CPR training.
Your family or friends may need it
          While getting CPR training you might be thinking about how you can help a stranger. However, someone in your family or workplace can be saved from sudden cardiac arrest because you performed CPR immediately. In 70% of cases, cardiac arrest happens at and people often do not get the chance to reach the hospital. You will be grateful for the skills that you have if the need arises. It will allow you to save the life of someone you love. In the case, you have taken a First Aid & CPR Course before, you could Recertify at one of our Downtown Toronto First Aid and CPR Recertification courses.
It can happen to anyone
       Most of the time cardiac arrest do not happen to people who are suffering from chronic heart or health condition. Traumatic accidents, choking, electric shock and drowning can be the cause of cardiac arrest. When taking one of our First Aid & CPR courses in downtown Toronto, you will be aware of all the situation where you need to be alert. There are some health conditions that can lead to cardiac arrest like.
1. Infections
2. Heart disease
3. Diabetes
4. Allergic reactions
5. Sudden cardiac arrest because of stress or depression.
Do not shy away
You might not feel confident when someone needs CPR. When you take your CPR training at Coast2coast First Aid & Aquatics your confidence level will increase and that will help you to make the right decision and save someone’s life.
Get Trained in Toronto!
Join our First Aid Training in Toronto and equip yourself with vital skills to handle emergencies confidently. Our expert instructors provide hands-on training to prepare you for real-life situations.
What You Need to Know About CPR Courses in Toronto
Readers who’ve been following our blog know by now more or less everything there is to know about CPR. We have talked long and in some detail about what CPR is, when it’s needed and the importance of knowing the life saving technique. In this article we’d like to tell our readers about the CPR training itself and what to expect from one of the many CPR courses in Toronto or the GTA.
CPR courses vary by level and other specifics. There are CPR and first aid classes by age, with different approaches for adults, children and infants. There are first aid classes focusing on specific types of dangers, such as fire injuries or drowning. CPR training and CPR certification renewal will also accentuate different things and have somewhat different content and duration as a result. Most CPR courses will, however, have a common structure.
General Toronto CPR Course Structure
During the course, which will usually take between one and two days, you will be introduced to key points of the CPR technique and the principles of its application. The course, despite a seemingly short time span, is usually comprehensive and focused, making it fully sufficient to prepare you for administering CPR in a time of need.
It begins with the theoretical part where you are given information. It is followed by a demonstration phase during which you’ll observe a trained medical instructor administer CPR to a mannequin or test subject. The students will be given review materials that you will collect upon arrival. Make sure to wear comfortable clothes and have a pen or pencil just in case. Arriving a few minutes early is also recommended.
Once you’re seated, the instructor will give an introduction to the topic, covering the purpose of CPR, its importance, and situations when it should be given to a victim. The manual will be reviewed and step-by-step cardiovascular resuscitation instructions followed and explained. You will be taught about the exact number of breaths and chest compressions a minute need to be given, how to check if it’s working, as well as the use of an AED (automatic external defibrillator) covered in general terms.
Demonstration and Application
Once the review phase has been concluded, trainees watch a series of video materials or a physical demonstration of the rescue process.
Finally, the students are asked to practice what they learned in the Toronto CPR course on a mannequin. This will allow the instructor to ascertain the information has been internalized and the person can be certified as CPR trained. If you’d like to know more about Toronto CPR courses or CPR certification renewal, give us a call and we’ll direct you to the best available option in your area.
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Get Trained in Toronto!
Join our First Aid Training in Toronto and equip yourself with vital skills to handle emergencies confidently. Our expert instructors provide hands-on training to prepare you for real-life situations.
Keep Your Family Safe With Red Cross CPR Courses
We all want to keep our loved ones safe, and take multiple measures of precaution to ensure their safety. We get everyone to wear their seat belts, make sure we cross the road in a safe manner. We keep bandages and medicine at home and at work…but do we really know how to respond to serious injury? When a pot of boiling water causes severe burns? When a child gets cut by a sharp kitchen utensil? When someone trips on the stairs and breaks an arm or a leg?
The sad truth is that our knowledge is, on average, based on fictional shows or films. That is not adequate knowledge to say the least. Taken at face value, it can even be truly dangerous in an emergency.
For one example, CPR courses teach us to perform cardiovascular resuscitation without endangering the unconscious person’s life. For another example, CPR and First Aid classes teach us how to lay a bandage or a tourniquet, and other essential skills anyone will wish they had known when their loved one is bleeding in their arms.
Let’s go into some detail as to what you get when you enroll into a series of CPR and FIrst Aid classes. This is a general breakdown of the essentials, not a specific course description. Still, it is enough to get an idea of the value they carry.
What do CPR Courses Teach
1. The EMS system
2. Airway emergencies
3. Breathing and Circulation emergencies
4. First aid for respiratory and cardiac arrest
5. Use of an Electronic Defibrillator
6. Bleeding and Wound Care
7. Head and spine injuries
8. Bone, muscle and joint injuries
9. Sudden Medical Emergencies
10. Environmental Emergencies
11. Poisonous Substances
It is our firm belief that as many people as possible should learn and get a CPR level C certification or another essential First Aid course.
It has been proven without a doubt that whether at home, at work, or outdoors, the chances of an injured person become considerably better when there is one other person around who’d been taught those significant skills. One of the best things is that the course is not even that long. Most courses are between one and two days long, six to eight hours a day. Take the time to enroll, and take your family with you.
Get on board with one of our First Aid CPR courses and keep each other safe with the important, invaluable knowledge this will gain you!
Register for CPR or First Aid Training
What Benefits A Workplace Obtains With CPR Training In Brampton?
Providing health and safety training is common practice in most workplaces, but somehow CPR and first aid are not. Which comes as a surprise if we consider it in some detail. In many workplaces, sharp tools and other dangerous implements and substances are routinely employed. It’s true that health and safety are there to keep us away from harm but what do you do when health and safety fails and a person still gets injured?
There are four primary reasons that make CPR and first aid certification extremely beneficial for a workplace.
The Sheer Practicality of First Aid Certification
1. An additional preventative factor. It solidifies health and safety training making employees more aware of dangers in their work environment.
2. The sheer lifesaving value. The value of even a standard first aid and CPR C course for the workplace can’t be overstated. When the injury is really bad, first aid becomes immediately crucial. Having people around who know what to do may actually save someone from dying.
3. Knowledge of tools and kits. When you train your employees in our CPR training Brampton center, they get familiar with the items in the medical supplies kit, learn to use an automated defibrillator, train in placing bandages and other critical skills that may be needed in an emergency.
Industry Specific
When an employer gets his employees trained in CPR and first aid, they get a training that’s tailored to their specific industry. Whether it’s an office environment, a manufacturing plant, construction site or kitchen. The hazards in those places differ and the way they need to be treated differ as well. So if you get a group-course for all your employees, you get a far more suitable set of skills and relevant knowledge.
It’s Simply Cost Effective
The choice of program, training provider and other considerations will influence the cost of the whole thing. When a company gets multiple employees into the same course, the costs per employee will go down considerably. And when you take into account the cost of workplace injuries, this becomes even more cost-effective.
Workplace Bonding and Morale
Companies who got their employees into a first aid or CPR training in Brampton or one of our many other training centers have all quickly discovered that company morale was also affected by the course. Employees became more confident and generally felt more trust towards the employer.
For those four reasons and more, we advise every employer to get their staff to our program for first aid and CPR training in Brampton, and see the magic happen.
Become a Lifesaver in Brampton!
Join our CPR training course in Brampton and learn the essential skills to respond effectively in emergencies. Our experienced instructors provide hands-on training to ensure you’re ready to act when it matters most.
Keep Your CPR Certificates Up To Date With CPR Recertification
There are many different CPR and first aid courses out there, but the majority of them are given for a period of 2 years. After that, CPR re-certification will be required to keep the license.
Here are several reasons why you’d really want to do this.
Keeping your CPR skills sharp.
It is always good to plan in advance and sign up for CPR re-certification classes at least six months before your current license expires. Even if you don’t need the certification for work, it is still crucial to maintain this skill in top notch condition so that you don’t panic or freeze should anything happen.
That and the additional fact that CPR, while not a complex practice to learn, can be physically taxing. Giving chest compressions to an unconscious person, keeping the compressions strong and delivering them at the right intervals for more than a few minutes will tire even a trained professional. You need to develop strength and muscle memory around the practice to be able to do it well. Practicing every two years is the very bare minimum if you want to keep it sharp.
A fast and precise response to an emergency is the main goal of those classes.
Follow and learn more advanced CPR techniques
Additionally, medicine as a practice, is based on science and as such never stands in one place. Procedures are improved and developed all the time. This means you will likely not only get a new licence when you get re-certified, but also learn a few new valuable things about the procedure.
For example, did you know that mouth to mouth resuscitation is no longer considered not only necessary but even simply more efficient. This happened in three stages.
First it was the only way of delivering CPR. Then it was accepted that CPR without mouth to mouth is almost as good. Now we know there is no evidence to support mouth to mouth resuscitation at all, since the procedure works just as well without it. Nowadays chest compressions are widely accepted as the more efficient method. We don’t know what will be discovered next; organizations like the National CPR foundation are continuously examining common practices and their results to develop more efficient CPR and first aid techniques.
Finally, re-certification can now be done at least partially online. Online CPR renewal, while slightly less efficient than full CPR recertification, is still much better than no CPR re-certification at all.
We urge everyone to get your licence renewed on a regular basis so that you have a better chance to save a life in an emergency.