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Aims of First Aid

The main aims of first aid are to:

‘Preserve Life’

‘Prevent deterioration’

‘Promote recovery’


Cutting out the gobledygook, this means we’ve got to try and stop anyone getting more injured, and help them to get better. Sometimes, if there's lots of things wrong with a patient, we need to treat the thing that will make them worse first.


If someone's bleeding, they'll live for quite a while. If oxygen isn't getting to their brain the patient will start to get worse, and will eventually die. This means that in every single patient you treat, your most important thing to do, after checking that you aren't in any danger, is to check that oxygen is getting to the brain.

Read on to see how to do this. This site is aimed at supplementing knowledge, and never aims to replace formal first aid teaching.

Paramedics and other medical people use a similar approach (Danger, Response, Help, Airway, Breathing, Ambulance) to work out which patients to treat first. The system they use is slightly more complicated, and they call it triage. If you're ever in a situation where there's more than one person hurt, make sure you get help as soon as you can- and treat the quietest patient first, as they are more likely to be seriously ill.