An appointed person is someone who will carry out the following duties:
- Take charge when someone is injured or becomes ill;
- Looks after the first aid equipment, including the re-stocking of first aid consumables and monitoring of expiry dates;
- Ensures that an ambulance or other professional medical help is summoned when appropriate.
It is not always that case that an appointed person is automatically a first aider, and they should not give treatment for which they have not been trained. However, it is good practice to ensure that the appointed person/people have emergency first aid training/refresher training. Normally a typically suitable first aid training course would include the following topics; this is not an exclusive list:
- What to do in an emergency;
- Cardiopulmonary resuscitation;
- First aid for the unconscious casualty;
- First aid for the wounded or bleeding
Once an appointed person has received first aid training it should assist them in coping with an emergency situation and improve their competence and confidence.
