St Andrew’s First Aid is taking a new campaign across the country

We speak to St Andrew’s First Aid team on Buchanan Street about their new campaign launching across summer 2025 to reduce fear around first aid.

Transcript

00:00We are going out in the summer with this campaign up and down the country, to all parts including

00:06some rural districts where we've not been active before. We'll be doing a road show

00:11with demonstrations of first aid, how to deal with choking. You can learn a lot of the basics

00:16without having to sit through like a four day course. The longer, the more training

00:21you have is always good but we're really just with our community team getting out and about

00:26to the highlands, the islands, the borders, everywhere across Scotland with this campaign

00:31to tell people what they should do and not to be afraid to get involved.

00:37New data has revealed that more than 200 lives are potentially being lost every year in Scotland

00:41due to people's reluctance to step in during a first aid emergency. A YouGov survey has

00:46shown that 7% of Scottish adults had found themselves in situations where they could have stepped

00:51in to provide first aid but chose not to. In this country 3,200 people experience out

00:57of hospital cardiac arrests each year and of these the survival rate is less than 1 in 10.

01:02This means of the minority who were perhaps more confident in stepping in and performing

01:06first aid, a potential 227 lives could be saved. St Andrew's first aid has launched a national

01:12campaign to combat this, aiming to show the general public that action is important and could be the

01:18difference between life and death. While the overwhelming majority recognise the importance

01:22of first aid, only 1 in 4 people say they would step into support in a first aid emergency, that they'd

01:27only do so after hesitation. These people admitted a lack of knowledge and training would be a mental

01:33barrier. St Andrew's first aid are encouraging people to step in, making them aware that even a

01:37little bit of knowledge can be life saving, that you don't necessarily need to have completed a

01:42four-day course to be effective in a first aid emergency.