Paediatric First Aid Training in Practice – Saving a Child’s Life

Dan Raymond

September 16, 2022

5 min read

Zig Zags Play & Party Area is an indoor soft play area based in Brierley Hill. We spoke to a Party Host, Emily Khan, about her recent experience involving a child who was visiting the play area.

“Straight away, I could tell something wasn’t right. There was no coughing, he was just arched over. Everyone was asking, ‘Are you okay? Are you okay?’ then I heard someone say, ‘Is he choking?’”

When a child at the soft play centre she worked at began to choke, Emily Khan, who had recently taken our Paediatric First Aid online training course, knew exactly what to do.

Watch our video below to hear Emily’s story:

Because of High Speed Training’s course, I felt confident to take action. Because it was so fresh in my mind it helped me to jump straight into it.

Emily Khan

Online Paediatric First Aid Training

Our Paediatric First Aid training course teaches those who work with infants or children how to deliver paediatric first aid assistance in an emergency. It covers a variety of fundamental first aid topics, including the law surrounding first aid, how to put children and infants into the recovery position, how to administer life-saving CPR, how to use defibrillators, and how to provide assistance for a variety of injuries and illnesses.

If a child is choking, and can verbally respond, breathe, or cough then you should encourage them to cough to try and clear the blockage or try to spit out the object if it’s in their mouth.

If a child is severely choking, and they can’t cough the obstruction clear, you should:

Rest their upper body forward on your forearm, with one hand supporting their chest.
Then, use the heel of your other hand to give a maximum of five sharp back blows between their shoulder blades.
After each of the blows, check to see if the obstruction has been removed from their mouth. Do not put your fingers in their mouth to try and locate any blockages, as this could cause you to accidentally push the object further down their throat.

High Speed Training’s course was really easy to do, as it was online, I could do it in my own time and I could stop and pause when I needed to.

I’m a mum and I’m quite busy at home so it really helped that I could do it in my own time. Booking off a full day to go to first aid training is quite hard, and getting childcare and a day off work can be tricky.

I’d definitely recommend the course and encourage people to go for it. Even if you don’t use what you’ve learnt, at least you have it. It’s better to have those skills than to not.

It’s important for everybody to have knowledge of first aid and know how to react in situations like that.

You just never know what’s going to happen.

Emily Khan

High Speed Training was the very first training provider to be awarded the prestigious Skills for Health Quality Mark Digital, and the Paediatric First Aid training course is fully certified by the CPD and IIRSM.

Richard Anderson, Head of Content Production at High Speed Training, said: “Situations like this one really show why it is so important that everyone has some basic knowledge of first aid, especially if they are working with children or young people.

“The ability to keep a cool head and act quickly and decisively in an emergency citation is really key, and, if Emily hadn’t been able to confidently act in this instance, there could have been a very different outcome.”

You can find out more information about this course here.