It’s a few years since I did a first course for outdoor activity injuries. Anyone recommend courses for MTB-type bumps and breaks?
Ideally southern England but anywhere really for a well recommended course.

If your ever up in Yorkshire

http://www.awesomefirstaid.co.uk is my little company

I’ve been doing the BASP outdoor emergency first aid course for the last ten years and really rate it. It’s my work certificate and a 2 day course that is totally relevant to outdoor activity injuries such as mtb among others. Genuinely come away feeling much much more confident in dealing with first aid situations

BASP outdoor course for me too. It really is a packed 2 days!

I did the BASP course years ago and it was far and away the best First Aid (for non professionals) course that I’ve ever done.

Think that the Outdoor Emergency First Aid might be the course you’re looking for.

Deffo find a course that is:
Outdoor based,
focused on crisis management, there’s much more than bandages to dealing with remote incidents.

APF

I’ve done about 4 first aid courses over the last 6 months – 2 emergency first aid and lasted 8 hours each, 1 Emergency first with Forestry and lasted a day and the final 1 was a 2 day first aid course.

The 2-day first aid course is needed for outdoors things, but apart from time spent on practicing the drills, it didn’t cover anything else that the 1-day course covered. The practicing of the drills was definitely beneficial, but I’m not clear on why outdoor things need a 2-day first aid course to be completed if it covers the same stuff as the 1 day (although there were more practical drills being done, so it might just be that doing the 2-day course means you go through dry runs of what you could/would/should do to assist).

The 2-day course I did was from https://firstaidtrainingcooperative.co.uk/outdoor/ – it was a good course, the instructor was very good and it was a good 2 days (despite me wondering what the benefit of the 2 days was – other than practical drills) – I’d recommend it.

Edit – just reading Alexpalefan’s post and agree about the crisis stuff – the Emergency First Aid with Forestry did cover this so perhaps I was already aware having completed that course 2 months prior.

I’ve always done REC (Rescue Emergency Care)-accredited courses through various providers, for keeping up a cert for my kayak coaching quallies and just for generally having one. They’ve always been good, done the ‘crisis management’ side as much as the actual keeping them breathing and stopping them bleeding part.

I don’t know if it’s still the case, but the basic courses used to be 1 day/8hr or 2 day/16hr for the HSE’s classifications – I’d always say do the 2 day!

https://recfirstaid.net/

I suppose OP and many others aren’t looking for accreditation whereas it (sensibly) seems many of the courses are aligned to that.

I’ve done both the BASP course 11 years ago, and more recently (last weekend) a 2-day outdoor-focussed first aid course.

Found the BASP course much more in-depth with much more scenarios played out, whereas the one last weekend was clearly a work first aid course with an outdoor specialist brought in (current mountain rescuer, ex-army) for part of it. Recent one was still good but very much a lighter touch and I’m glad I’d done the BASP one previously – this recent one acted more like a refresher for me.

Think it largely comes down to the instructor/location. My BASP was delivered by Jeff Starkey, mainly outside the top gondola station at Nevis Range in April one year, still with snow on the ground. Great instructor IME. He loved a dose of realism so there was a lot of fake blood and scenarios, and he’d tailored the scenarios specifically for MTBing (I was training up ahead of acting as bike patrol). In comparison, we didn’t leave the carpark of the business park on my recent course…

The 2-day course I did was from https://firstaidtrainingcooperative.co.uk/outdoor/ – it was a good course, the instructor was very good and it was a good 2 days (despite me wondering what the benefit of the 2 days was – other than practical drills) – I’d recommend it.

+1, actually I have done it twice now !

Oooh interesting – I’m going to do one of those basp ones in Hemel in the next month or so. Cheers for the link!

Did a great wilderness 1st aid course in Edale last year (shout out for High Peak 1st aid training). Getting some training is undoubtedly a good idea; we mountain bikers are now take a significant share of mountain rescue effort these days, in the Peak district at least.

You can download the BASP Outdoor First Aid manual here for free:

https://www.basp.org.uk/first-aid-training-courses/first-aid-manual/

Thanks, yes that’s the one I last did, but it’s expired and I’ve forgotten most of it anyway!

@flannol Have you got the details, it’s local to me. Maybe I can sign up too?

Thanks everyone – plenty of links and advice. I’ll probably redo the BASP one as that covered cold weather as well as head and shoulder injuries that is useful for MTBers. As someone commented above, it’s also good to have a think about remote location skills where an ambulance isn’t going to turn up anytime soon.