Primary and Secondary Care: The First Aid Course Divers Need

Of all the courses we run at the academy, Emergency First Response Primary and Secondary Care might be the one with the widest reach, because you do not actually need to be a diver to benefit from it. It is a genuine, practical first aid and CPR qualification, built by the training organisation behind PADI's own emergency care standards, and it is one of those courses people regularly finish wishing they had done years earlier.

What Is Primary and Secondary Care?

Primary Care covers the immediate, potentially life-saving response to a medical emergency: checking for responsiveness, managing an airway, rescue breathing, CPR, and using an automated external defibrillator. Secondary Care picks up from there, covering the ongoing assessment and care you might need to provide while waiting for professional medical help to arrive, including injury assessment, bandaging, and recognising signs of shock or serious illness. Together, the two form a complete, practical first aid qualification that goes well beyond the basics taught in a typical workplace first aid day.

It is worth being clear about what this course is not. It is not a medical qualification, and it does not turn you into a paramedic. What it does is give you the confidence and practical ability to act competently and calmly in the crucial first minutes of an emergency, before professional help takes over, which is very often the window that matters most.

Who Is This Course For?

Divers take this course for an obvious reason, it is a prerequisite for PADI Rescue Diver, and a genuinely sensible thing to know before heading into remote dive sites or expedition-style trips where help might be some distance away. But a significant number of people who complete it every year have never dived at all. Parents want it for peace of mind at home. People with older or vulnerable relatives want the confidence to act if something goes wrong. Employers send staff on it as part of workplace first aid provision. Coaches, scout leaders and anyone responsible for groups of people, in or out of the water, find it directly useful. Put simply, this is a course for anyone who wants to feel capable rather than helpless if they are ever the first person on the scene of an emergency.

Prerequisites and What to Expect Before You Start

There genuinely are none. You do not need to be a diver, you do not need any prior first aid training, and there is no fitness test or medical form to complete beforehand. It is one of the most accessible courses on our schedule for exactly that reason. All you need to bring is a willingness to get involved in some hands-on practice, since this is very much a practical, skills-based course rather than a lecture.

What a Typical Training Day Looks Like

The course typically runs across a single, focused day, split between clear explanation of the theory and plenty of hands-on practice using training manikins. You will work through realistic scenarios with an instructor, practising rescue breathing and CPR technique, using an AED trainer, and working through bandaging and injury assessment on a practice partner. It is a genuinely active, sometimes physically tiring day, deliberately designed so that the movements become familiar in your hands rather than just understood in theory, because muscle memory is exactly what you need in a real emergency, not the memory of a slide you once read.

Group sizes are kept small so everyone gets proper individual practice time and direct feedback from the instructor, rather than watching from the back of a large room.

What You'll Actually Learn

By the end of the course you will be able to assess an unresponsive person and manage their airway, perform effective CPR with confidence in the correct rate and depth, use an AED safely and correctly, control serious bleeding, recognise and respond to shock, and provide basic care for injuries while waiting for professional help. You will also come away with a much better sense of when to call for emergency help immediately versus when a situation can be safely managed on the spot, which is a judgment call that trips up a lot of people who have never had proper training.

What to Bring and How to Book

You don't need to bring any special equipment, just comfortable clothing you don't mind getting down on the floor in, since a fair amount of the practical work happens kneeling or sitting beside a training manikin. Course dates run regularly through the year, including quieter weekday sessions that tend to suit people fitting it around work, and small group sizes mean spaces can fill up, so it's worth booking a little ahead if you have a particular date in mind, whether that's before a Rescue Diver course, before a trip, or simply because you've decided this is the year you finally get around to it.

Common Questions Before Booking

Do I need to be fit or young to take this course? No. It suits a very wide range of ages and fitness levels, and the physical skills are well within reach of almost anyone.

How long does the certification last? Like most first aid qualifications, it is designed to be refreshed periodically to keep skills current, and we offer refresher options so it never lapses unnoticed.

Is this the same as a workplace first aid certificate? It covers much of the same practical ground and is widely accepted for workplace purposes, though it is always worth checking your specific employer's requirements.

Do I need to complete this before Rescue Diver? Yes, current Primary and Secondary Care certification, or equivalent, is a prerequisite for PADI Rescue Diver training.

Why It's Worth Doing (Even If You're Not a Diver)

The honest pitch for this course has nothing to do with diving at all. Most people go their entire lives never using formal first aid training, and then very occasionally, someone genuinely needs it, at home, on the street, at work, and the difference between freezing and acting can matter enormously. This course exists to close that gap, affordably, in a single day, with skills that stay useful for the rest of your life regardless of whether you ever put on a mask and fins.

There is also a quieter benefit that people rarely mention beforehand but almost always bring up afterwards, a kind of calm that comes from knowing what to do. Plenty of people carry a low-level anxiety about medical emergencies precisely because they don't know how they would react, and that uncertainty tends to fade once you've actually practised the skills under guidance. Instructors often hear from past students who describe feeling noticeably less anxious as a parent, a carer, or simply as someone out in the world, not because emergencies became less likely, but because they no longer feel unprepared for one.

How It Fits Into a Bigger Pathway

For divers specifically, Primary and Secondary Care sits neatly on the pathway toward Rescue Diver and, eventually, professional-level training through our Professional Academy for anyone considering becoming a divemaster or instructor down the line. But it stands entirely on its own too, a genuinely valuable qualification whether or not diving ever enters the picture again.

Ready to book your Primary and Secondary Care course? Visit the course page to see upcoming dates, or get in touch at Bellman Court, Great Knollys Street, Reading, call +44 (0) 118 9761 729, and we'll get you booked in.