Are prehospital deaths from trauma and accidental injury preventable? A summary report 9 > placement of the learner at the centre, and has altered since the original study. In line with our making the experience as relevant and strategic objective, we are also keen to address empowering for them as possible. whether the nature and cause of injury have changed. The Red Cross monitors the effectiveness of education by measuring learner confidence before and after sessions. This allows us to scrutinise External context our own delivery as education providers and to implement continuous improvement. Research is Educational setting also undertaken to examine the effectiveness of different pedagogies with different audiences to Given the lack of action by bystanders found in inform our education strategy. Hussain and Redmond’s original study (1994), the authors recommended that “training in basic first Understanding where, why and how death aid should be compulsory in schools” (p.1079). and injury occur, and the likelihood that first aid Despite widespread public support for such a interventions could have made a difference, is move and campaigns run by the Red Cross and 1 central to our efforts. others to make first aid mandatory in all state- funded secondary schools in England, this goal of Are prehospital deaths from mandatory first aid has not been realised. accidental injury preventable? In England, first aid does feature in the recommended Personal, Social, Health and In 1988, a Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) Economic (PSHE) education curriculum, but this retrospective study of 1,000 trauma deaths is not a statutory subject and is not widely taught reported on the management of patients with to a high standard, according to the House of major injuries (Saleh 1989). The RCS report Commons Education Committee (2015). The concluded that up to one-third of hospital trauma Committee and other Committee Chairs recently deaths could have been prevented, if the response recommended making PSHE compulsory from the emergency health system had been (Commons Select Committee 2016), but the UK optimal. In others words, something could or Government decided not to do so (Morgan 2016). should have been done to alter the final outcome for the patient. However, the report did not include PSHE is not the only route through which to deaths that occurred outside hospital. This teach first aid. It could be taught in a variety of exclusion implies a perceived inevitability of death other existing subjects or cross-cutting curricula, occurring prior to receiving professional help. including Physical Education and as an after- school activity. Furthermore, publicly funded Challenging this assumption, Hussain and academies present an opportunity to increase Redmond (1994) conducted a study of the the teaching of first aid since, as they continue prehospital deaths from accidental injury in North to increase in number and now form almost half Staffordshire between 1987 and 1990. They of all secondary schools (Parliament UK 2015b), revealed that up to 39 per cent of these deaths they do not need to follow the curriculum, might have been preventable with the provision of although they must teach “a broad and balanced basic first aid. curriculum” (Department for Education 2015, p.38). Academies may, therefore, be well placed to Dean et al. (2014) report that 37.1 per cent of the incorporate whole-school approaches and could people attended to by the emergency services embrace first aid as part of a broader theme, such who die do so before reaching hospital, with the as health and well-being, across various aspects remainder dying in hospital. The time period before of school life. hospitalisation is, therefore, critical. It is during this time, prior to professional intervention, when the Education is a devolved matter; therefore, different public is in a position to intervene with basic first approaches are adopted across the UK. Wales aid, and this intervention may well be life-saving. has a similar curriculum to England’s, with first Oliver and Walter (2016) refer to the prehospital aid optional within the statutory Personal and period as the ‘therapeutic vacuum’. Social Education (PSE) (Department for Children, As a first aid provider, we are keen to re-examine 1 These include ‘Pupil Citizen Lifesaver’ (2013) and ‘Every Child a whether the number of deaths that may have been Lifesaver’ (2015), the latter a collaboration with St John Ambulance and the British Heart Foundation in support of Teresa Pearce MP’s private preventable with the provision of basic first aid members’ bill (Parliament UK 2015a).