Quality Assurance

Our sole aim is to deliver the best quality First Aid and pre-hospital medical training currently available, anywhere.

How do we validate this and what is your assurance that this is what you are getting?

Accreditation

External Accreditation is the most obvious form of Quality Assurance as it provides an objective mechanism for the assurance of quality and standards.

It is important that at higher levels of training there is some form of standardisation for employers and customers to recognise, as such, our First Responder course is externally accredited by Qualifications Network.

Since the 2013 changes to the First Aid at Work accreditation process we have been delivering our First Aid at Work, Emergency First Aid at Work and Remote First Aid entirely independently. Not because it is easier - in many ways it is harder .

Delivering our own courses:

Makes us 100% accountable for everything we are doing.
Allows us the flexibility to tailor courses to clients needs.
Allows us to move with current changes in best practice long before the traditional awarding organisations.

So how do we maintain quality without external accreditation?

Current Guidance

The content of our courses are cross-matched to leading UK and international advisory bodies including:

Specific content may also be taken from current peer-reviewed literature, in which case such guidance is clearly cited in course syllabi and our referenced articles.

ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System

Real First Aid Ltd is accredited to ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems for "the design and delivery of First Aid and Health & Safety training and organisational support". ISO 9001:2015 is nothing to do with first aid, instead it is an international standard of Quality Management. This helps us ensure a consistent, high levels of quality, not just in our training delivery but also how we operate as a business. There is no statutory obligation for a service provider to gain ISO 9001 accreditation; the benefits are to the customer.

A robust quality management system ensures:

Our business is directed by customer satisfaction.
We have a formal, documented and applied process of continual improvement.
We adhere to statutory and regulatory requirements within our industry.
We identify and mitigate social, corporate, environmental and Health & Safety risks.
We conduct both an economic and ethical review of our supply chain.

Being externally audited, the processes behind our services are independently and objectively reviewed annually. If we say we are doing something, we have to prove it.

ISO 27001:2013 Information Security Management System

Information Security is much more than GDPR. Many of our key clients are in sectors including Defense, Energy and Pharmaceuticals. On occasion we are fortunate to be exposed to sensitive information, their employees and their facilities in order for us to cater to their specific needs and create relevant, applicable training scenarios. We take that responsibility seriously.

Being accredited to an international standard which is externally audited is a credible, objective measure of our commitment to how we handle, process and store information.

The benefits of ISO 27001 also include:

Robust methods of secure data handling, storage and access.
A vastly reduced risk of information security breaches.
Increased compliance with legislative responsibilities.
An enhanced awareness of information security with all employees.
Employment Contracts and Non Disclosure Agreements which are designed to protect the interests of our company, employees and our clients equally.

Our instructors

We only work with trainers who have the Holy Trinity of skills we desire

A rubust understanding of training and education.
Considerable and current trade experience.
Nice people.

The most experience and knowledgeable practitioner cannot necessarily teach and teaching abilities alone lacks substance and expertise. Furthermore our instructors have be be the kind of people we can put in front of any client in any situation; an inability to simply get on with people is a barrier to how receptive the candidates will be to the instructor's skills and experience they attempting to impart.

We receive consistently strong feedback on the quality of our delivery. Anyone can show you how to put a bandage on but engaging a learner,

fielding difficult questions,

explaining complex ideas simply,

motivating change,

providing constructive feedback,

building both competence and confidence...

in a class of individuals, with various skills, knowledge and backgrounds requires more than a teaching qualification.

Proven Educational Process

We have written elsewhere on our unique training methods which are at the core of our business. We don’t do things differently because they are easy, we do things because they work.

Assessment Process

Some of our more basic courses are assessed by continual observation; errors are corrected as the course progresses and opportunities are created to ensure candidates understand new concepts.

Some courses require more rigorous assessment criteria to ensure credibility and validity of the qualification.

We appreciate that assessments can be daunting and, often, unrealistic. As such we use a range of techniques including continual observation, skills stations, scenario driven exercises, MCQ and viva voce to ensure that candidates are afforded the best possible opportunities to demonstrate their abilities in realistic situations whilst maintaining integrity.

Feedback

Just as our training and delivery is unique and engaging, we collect feedback in a unique, purposeful and meaningful way which reveals more than any "1-5" star chart or contrived form.

Knowing what customers want and need allows us to deliver to our customers requirements.

Find out more about our feedback process here.

Transparency

All of our Policies are publicly available so you can see - and question - how we should be operating.

Insurance

We hold £6,000,000 public liability and professional indemnity insurance. Despite best efforts, accidents can happen and things can go wrong. We have stringent safety processes in place but in the unlikely event of an incident, rest assured we are protected, which means you are protected.