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According to St Andrew’s First Aid, a Scottish first aid charity, the majority of Scottish parents don’t have the first aid training they need to save their child’s life in an emergency.

St Andrew’s has revealed that less than one in four Scots has undergone the relevant training to learn the skills they need to give first aid to a child. The charity is hoping that its recent St Andrew’s Scottish First Aid Week, which ran from the 24th to the 30th of November, will have encouraged more parents to book themselves on a training course.

The campaign seems to be working, as Scottish mother Felicity Brown recently spoke to the Scottish record about how undergoing first aid training helped her to save her son’s life.

Mrs Brown, 25, witnessed her 2-year-old son Daniel collapsing one morning after a period of illness. She rushed to help him along with her husband Mark, who she actually met whilst on a first aid training course, and the couple quickly realised that their son wasn’t breathing. Mrs Brown described what happened, saying:

“We realised he wasn’t breathing properly – his airway was compromised so we got him on his back and tilted his head back to open up his airway.
“Then I put him in a recovery position while Mark phoned for an ambulance.”

Thanks to the family’s decision to train in paediatric first aid, the little boy was kept alive until paramedics arrived and he soon recovered in hospital.