Posted By Pat Hannaway Under current First Aid at Work Regulations NO medication may be administered. Suggest that you contact one of the registered First Aid Training providers for definitive advice - e.g."Administering first aid to children". PH

Posted By Brett Day Ron Things to consider apart from the fact that the HSE First Aiders are taught NOT to adminster medication. If a child (16) has had a heart attack, why? As you point out they are rare, which may point to an underlying condition that a. aspirin could aggrevate, b. may already be on aspirin therapy from their GP so could lead to an overdose. Again rare(ish) but more people are becoming allergic to aspirin - solve the heart attack but kill the casualty through anaphylaxis, it flies in the face of teh first instryuction to first aiders - DO NO HARM. Given that treating a casualty can be a stressful situation the chance of errors can be greater especially given that a first aider may have no idea of medical history e.g. allergies, any current medication being taken etc. To pick up some real life examples, whilst I was in the RAF Search and Rescue we were sent out to three heart attack patients that all resulted in a fatality: 1: Casualty had an allergy to allergy, first aider gave aspirin. 2&3: First aider gave aspirin every 15 minutes, they lost track of how many given and how many given at each time. We were taught to administer certain drugs, saline and blood expanders and all through our training were taught make absolutely sure you know what you are doing, things like morphine we wrote the dose given on the patients face. As first aiders are not trained to adminster medication I do worry very much when I see threads (especially when from someone who has had a 4 day HSE FAW course then ask about aspirin) Ron, this isn't a pop at you but a general observation. I am also very concerened that some first aid training organisations take a 'nudge, nudge' approach when it comes to the HSE FAW course and medication, normally along the lines of "The Regs and course say you cannot give medication, but if it was me having a heart attack the..." And then fail to point out the protocols fro adminstering medication.