Learning first aid is an important step for anyone to take. You may have to become qualified as a first-aider for your work – and your training could also be the difference between life and death for someone you come across in everyday life. But what can you expect to do on a course?
This post explores some of the things you’ll learn about as part of the two types of work-related first aid training: Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW) and First Aid at Work (FAW). We’ll look at how long these courses take, the topics you’ll cover, assessment, and preparation.
Last reviewed: September 2026 — checked against Resuscitation Council UK Guidelines 2025.
How long is a first aid course?
The length of your course will depend on which type you take. The short EFAW course takes one day – the HSE expects six hours of learning, excluding breaks. The full FAW course takes three days. If you already hold a FAW certificate, the requalification course is two days.
You may also be offered a blended course, where you do the theory online and then attend for the practical days. The Health and Safety Executive accepts blended learning in the 2024 revision of its guidance, L74, provided the total learning time is not cut and the practical skills are still taught and assessed face to face by direct observation. A course delivered entirely online, with no practical assessment, does not meet the requirement.
Whichever route you take, a FAW or EFAW certificate lasts three years. The HSE strongly recommends an annual refresher in between, although that is a recommendation rather than a legal requirement.
What you’ll learn
You’ll first be introduced to the fundamentals of first aid in a working environment. To begin with, your trainer will teach you about:
- First-aiders in the workplace, including their roles and responsibilities;
- The contents of a first aid kit, and the British Standard most workplace kits are built to, BS 8599-1:2019;
- Record keeping and reporting – the accident book you fill in for every incident a first-aider attends, and the separate legal duty on the employer to report certain injuries and dangerous occurrences to the HSE under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR);
- How to assess and respond to a first aid emergency, including your own safety and preventing cross infection;
- How the employer’s first-aid needs assessment decides what training and equipment the workplace needs. Since the 2024 revision of HSE guidance L74, that assessment has to take account of mental health as well as physical risk, and it is what determines whether your course should also cover life-threatening bleeding, including tourniquets and haemostatic dressings.
This part of the course will provide you with the theoretical knowledge that you’ll need as a first-aider. After this, you’ll go on to explore more specific work-related first aid scenarios and injuries that you might have to treat in the role. The range of injuries that you learn about will depend on the course that you enrol on, as you’ll see below.
Emergency First Aid at Work course
The shorter one-day EFAW course provides you with practical training in how to deal with commonplace incidents such as minor cuts and wounds. For these types of injuries, you’ll be taught about important first aid tasks such as stopping the bleeding, cleaning wounds, applying dressings, and watching out for signs of infection.
Minor burns and scalds are also a common type of injury that you’ll come across in many workplaces. As part of your training, your tutor will explain how to treat someone who has been burned: cool the burn under cool running water for at least 20 minutes, remove clothing and jewellery from the area unless it is stuck to the skin, then cover it loosely with cling film or a sterile, non-fluffy dressing. You will be taught not to put creams, lotions, ointments, butter or ice on a burn, and to get medical help for anything large, deep, or involving the face, hands, feet or genitals.
The rest of the one-day syllabus follows what the HSE sets out for EFAW in Appendix 6 of its guidance, L74. You will also be taught how to help someone who is:
- Unresponsive and breathing, including the recovery position
- Unresponsive and not breathing – you will be trained to give cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and to use an automated external defibrillator (AED)
- Having a seizure
- Choking
- Wounded and bleeding
- In shock
- Suffering a minor injury such as a small cut, graze, bruise, minor burn or splinter
For more serious injuries and incidents like these, the training is designed to ensure that you can support someone through a potentially life-threatening situation whilst medically trained professionals arrive.
CPR, defibrillators and choking under the 2025 guidelines
Every first aid course in the UK has to teach the current Resuscitation Council UK guidelines. Training materials have had to comply with the 2025 guidelines since January 2026, so this is what you will now be taught and assessed on:
- Call 999 for any unresponsive person before you check their breathing. This is the change people notice most. You no longer confirm that breathing is absent or abnormal first. Put the phone on speaker so the ambulance call handler can talk you through what to do.
- Adult chest compressions go 5 to 6 cm deep at a rate of 100 to 120 a minute, with 30 compressions to 2 rescue breaths.
- Hands-only CPR is the right answer for anyone untrained or unwilling to give rescue breaths – compressions alone are far better than nothing.
- Get an AED on as soon as one is available. Anyone may use a defibrillator and no training is legally required to do so; the machine tells you what to do and will not shock a heart that does not need it.
- Choking is managed by encouraging the person to cough, then 5 back blows, then 5 abdominal thrusts, alternating between the two. Chest thrusts replace abdominal thrusts for infants and in late pregnancy. Call 999 if the blockage does not clear, and start CPR if the person becomes unresponsive. Never sweep a finger blindly round the mouth – only remove an object you can clearly see and easily grasp.
- The recovery position is for an unresponsive person who is breathing normally. You are taught not to roll a casualty with a suspected spinal injury unless their airway is at risk – a clear airway matters more than spinal precautions.
A first aid course also separates a heart attack from a cardiac arrest, because the response is different: someone having a heart attack is usually conscious and needs 999, rest and reassurance, while someone in cardiac arrest is unresponsive and not breathing normally and needs CPR and a defibrillator immediately.
Three-day first aid course: what to expect
If you take the full three-day FAW course with us, you’ll cover all of the above injuries in much greater detail. As this programme is designed for individuals working in high-risk environments, you will also be taught how to treat:
- Injuries to bones, muscles, and joints, including suspected spinal injuries and fractures
- Chest injuries
- More serious burns and scalds
- Eye injuries
- Incidents of sudden poisoning (including carbon monoxide and common forms of ingested poisons)
- Anaphylaxis, and the use of an adrenaline auto-injector
- Recognising and responding to major illness – heart attack, stroke, epilepsy, asthma and diabetes.
That split comes from the HSE itself: Appendix 6 of L74 sets the EFAW syllabus and Appendix 5 adds the extra subject areas that make up FAW. It is why your employer’s first-aid needs assessment, not habit or budget, should decide which course you are sent on. Where that assessment identifies a risk of life-threatening bleeding, the HSE expects the training to cover it, including tourniquets and haemostatic dressings.
How will I be assessed?
Again, the mode of assessment depends on the course you enrol on, but both are practical rather than academic – you have to show you can do it, not just describe it.
On the one-day Emergency First Aid at Work course there is no formal end-of-course exam. Your trainer assesses you continuously through the day, watching you demonstrate the practical skills and asking questions, to confirm you have met every learning outcome.
On the three-day First Aid at Work course you are also assessed by observation throughout, and there is a final assessment at the end of the training, which leads to the FAIB-accredited Level 3 First Aid at Work qualification.
Whichever course you take, the practical elements have to be assessed face to face by direct observation. That is true of blended courses too – the online part covers theory, but nobody gets a certificate without demonstrating CPR and the other hands-on skills in front of an assessor.
Where can I do a first aid course?
These types of first aid courses are readily available throughout the UK. We also offer on-site first aid training – this can be delivered either at your place of work or a venue of your choosing.
How to prepare beforehand
There are no entry requirements for our courses. That said, it can be useful to familiarise yourself with some of the basic theory beforehand. To help you with this, we’ve provided a wide range of helpful first aid resources on our site. Take a look to learn about everything from first aid needs assessments to how to treat someone who has had a fall.
There’s no need to do any extensive learning, though, and there is no need to try to memorise procedures in advance. If you do read up beforehand, make sure the source is current: anything written before 2026 may still describe the previous resuscitation guidelines, and following an out-of-date sequence on the course will only get in your way. Come with questions rather than a rehearsed routine.
In terms of other useful preparation tips, you should ensure that you wear appropriate clothing. Most casual, loose-fitting clothes will be fine for taking part in the course, but it’s advisable to wear trousers for your comfort as some of the practical elements will require you to kneel on the floor. Flat-bottomed shoes are also recommended for the more physical parts of the course.
It’s worth noting that you should only attend if you’re physically able to move about and kneel for prolonged periods. If you suffer from physical constraints or disabilities, get in touch with us before you book. We will be able to advise you on whether you can qualify as a first-aider.
We hope that this guide has given you some useful insight into what you do on a first aid course, how long it takes, and how to prepare. If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch or check out our range of first aid courses to learn more.
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