Schoolteachers Teach First Aid and Trauma Management to Young Primary School Children: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Objectives: This pilot study investigated the effectiveness of teaching first aid to 6-8-year-old children in their primary school. The research questions addressed by this study were whether children of this age can learn first aid and trauma management from their teachers at school, and, if so, how long the children retain the first aid information.Methods: We conducted a pilot randomized controlled trial in one primary school in Greece. The researchers selected 60 6-8-year-old schoolchildren at random, of which 30 children were allocated to the training group, and 30, who received no intervention, to the control group. The first aid training program conducted by the children’s primary school teachers, who had received appropriate instruction. To assess the children’s knowledge of first aid, a questionnaire was administered to all the children one day before, and to the children in the training group one day after, and two, and six months after the training.Results: Before the training, no significant difference in first aid knowledge was recorded between the children in the training group and the untrained children in the control group. One day after training, the trained children scored considerably higher (p<0.05) than those in the control group. This first aid knowledge gradually declined two and six months after training, but it remained than the pre-training level.Conclusions: First aid training provided by their teachers improved the knowledge of 6-8-year-old primary school children in first aid and trauma management.