Emergency First Response

Emergency First Response primary and secondary care training teaches you what to do in the critical moments between when a life-threatening emergency occurs and when emergency medical services arrive.

Learn how to perform CPR, provide first aid that eases pain, assess a variety of injuries and illnesses and practice bandaging and splinting.

EFR courses are available from your PADI Instructor, but they are not dive courses. They are CPR, first-aid and automated external defibrillator first-responder courses, covering many of the same skills you would learn from the Red Cross or similar organizations.

EFR teaches primary care skills for life-threatening emergencies. This includes specific skills for working with adults or children who aren’t breathing or don’t have a heartbeat. The goal of these skill is to sustain a patient long enough for emergency services to arrive on the scene.

The course also demonstrates what to do if a victim might have a spinal injury, and how to provide first aid to a person who is in shock or has serious bleeding. It covers how to use an automated external defibrillator, an electronic device that may help restore a heartbeat.

In addition to these primary care skills, EFR covers secondary first-aid skills, including assessing a patient’s condition, bandaging and dressing wounds, and splinting broken bones.