In the past, people who wanted to get First Aid training had to complete courses in-person. Now, St. John Ambulance and Yardstick have made those classes available online.
“It’s available to anybody who wants to take life-saving training,” Yardstick president Greg Kureluk said.
“By making it available online it’s available to anybody with an internet connection 24/7. So, not limited by geography or by hours or scheduling.”
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St. John Ambulance has made six different courses available online.
“We’ve taken our most popular courses that we offer in-class and we’ve transferred them into an e-learning program,” St. John Ambulance vice-president, Beverly Lafortune, said. “Sometimes people want just a one-day course. So, for example, we offer a one-day emergency First Aid course with Level A CPR — that’s adult resuscitation.
“The most popular course is the standard First Aid course which is a two-day course with Level C CPR, which includes infants, children and adult CPR.”
Lafortune said they also offer a health-care provider module for CPR.
“We want to give options for people and they can also take CPR only.
“There are some people who may want to just learn resuscitation skills so we wanted to make sure that we reduce all the barriers to learning as much as possible and give people options.”
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St. John Ambulance is still waiting for approval for its for-certification workplace First Aid online training.
“One of the options that’s available right now is for personal interest,” Lafortune said. “We reduce the cost to $25. For any course, it’s $25 for awareness training. These types of courses are for people who don’t require certification for work. As we know, many incidents happen at home.”
Only about 37 per cent of Canadians have some type of First Aid training, she said. So, St. John Ambulance hopes making the courses accessible online will increase the opportunity for everyone to learn these critical skills.
“Early recognition, early intervention saves lives. We know in many critical incidents that seconds count.
“We are hoping that by reducing the barriers and bringing it online that we will double what we’re currently seeing in terms of the compliance rate for First Aid.”
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Kureluk said Yardstick was thrilled to work with St. John Ambulance to develop the online training.
“It’s incredibly meaningful because our partnership and our technology is going to save lives — have a hand in saving lives.”
He said it’s also a huge accomplishment for an Edmonton tech business.
“It’s a big milestone. This type of partnership will put Yardstick on the map across the country… because it’s going to put our technology in the hands of thousands of people across the province and hopefully, across the country.”
Another online feature will be the shopping cart. People can sign up for an online court and also purchase a First Aid kit for their home. And it doesn’t end there.
“One of the coolest bits will be that our technology is going to allow people to carry their credentials or their certification of training on their phones,” Kureluk said.
“Using our learner-verified technology, this concept of mobile credentials or digital credentials is going to be launched as part of this project.”
Students are assessed at each stage as they take the online courses. They must achieve a grade of at least 75 per cent before moving on to the next module.
For more information or to take the online First Aid training, click here.
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