CPR-A & AED in Calgary

CPR Level A is adult CPR. Level C is adult, child and infant CPR. That is the whole distinction, and it is the reason people book the wrong course. The Canadian Red Cross defines these levels, not us, and the letter on your certificate tells an employer exactly which patients you were trained and evaluated on. There is also a Level B in the Red Cross system, adult and child, which most people only ever meet inside the child care first aid course. If you are choosing between courses on this site, the practical choice is A or C.

If children are anywhere in the picture, Level C is the one to look at. Parents, grandparents, teachers, education assistants, coaches, day home and child care staff, babysitters, camp and swim staff, and anybody working somewhere the public walks in with a stroller should be looking at Level C. Compressions on a small child and on an infant are not the same technique as compressions on an adult, and rescue breathing is different again. Being certified in Level A does not train you for those patients, and it does not put that scope on your certificate.

Level A is honest and useful when your world is genuinely adults only, or when the person asking you for CPR named Level A specifically. A machine shop, a warehouse crew, an adult-only worksite, a bar or a night shift with no public access: that is where Level A sits comfortably. Outside of that, we would rather send you to the Level C course than take a booking for this one and have you find out later that your certificate does not cover the patient you were worried about.

Checking is easy. Look at the wording you were given and find the letter. If it says CPR-C, CPR Level C, or mentions child and infant, this is not your course. If it says nothing more specific than "CPR certified" or "CPR/AED", go back and ask which level, because the person who wrote that sentence usually knows and just did not write it down. Send us what you were given and we will read it with you before you register.

The scope of the course is adult CPR and using an AED on an adult. That is it, and that is deliberate. Because this is a Canadian Red Cross course, the Red Cross owns the curriculum and we teach to their standard, and we are not going to reprint their lesson list here. If you need the current official course description for a hiring file or a safety manager, ask us and we will point you at the Red Cross's own published description rather than at our paraphrase of it.

What we can tell you is what the room is like, because that is ours to describe. You are on the floor, on your knees, over a manikin, for longer than most people expect, and you do it again after you have done it once. Nobody learns this from watching. The point is not to see it done. The point is to have done it enough times that your hands know where to go while the rest of you is still catching up.

The other thing you learn on the floor is the unglamorous part. Proper CPR is hard physical work, and you will want to stop long before it is time to stop. So you practise while you are tired, and you practise trading places with somebody else without letting the compressions stall, because in a real arrest the person beside you is the only reason good compressions last more than a few minutes.

What Delta adds is context from people who have run real cardiac arrests. Our instructors work as paramedics, firefighters and emergency professionals, so the scenarios are built the way calls actually go: an awkward spot on a hard floor, a bystander who wants to help but does not know how, a phone on speaker, and a patient who does not look anything like a clean classroom demonstration. That realism is the difference between knowing the steps and doing them.

Level A fits adult-only environments, and it is easier to picture as one specific room than as a list. A warehouse on night shift, where the AED has been on the wall by the front office for three years and nobody has opened the cabinet, and the person standing closest to it at two in the morning is a shift lead with no training. Level A is a sensible certificate for that person. So it is for the adult child who watched a parent go down in the kitchen and stood there doing nothing useful, and does not intend to be that person a second time. Family caregivers are a good fit for Level A: if you are looking after an adult parent or partner with a cardiac history, this is a reasonable, contained thing to go and learn. So are volunteers with adult-focused organizations, and people who are simply overdue, because if the last CPR course you sat was years ago, the guidance has moved on and so has the equipment.

Book something else if children are anywhere in the picture. That is Level C, and it is a short step up rather than a different world. Book something else, too, if what you were asked for includes first aid: bleeding, burns, breaks, head injuries and medical emergencies are not part of a CPR-only course, and the longer workplace first aid course has CPR-C built into it already. And if the wording you were given says Basic Life Support or healthcare provider CPR, that is a different certificate again, aimed at people working in health care.

We would rather have that conversation before you register than after. Telling somebody they have booked the wrong course is a bad five minutes. Telling them after their certificate has already been rejected is much worse.

Every date we have open is listed on this page under Upcoming dates, in Calgary and in Leduc, and you can book any of them directly. If none of them fits, tell us the deadline you are working to and we will tell you what is coming. Groups are often the fastest route: if you have a handful of people who all need adult CPR, we will look at building a date around you, at our location or at yours.

The fee is shown on this page. Hours, format and schedule are confirmed with the run once a date is published, and settled with you at registration. If you find different details for Delta's CPR-A quoted anywhere else, check them with us before you plan around them.

Certification is not automatic. You attend the full course and demonstrate the skills to the instructor, on the floor, to the Red Cross standard. Nobody is passed on attendance alone, and that is deliberate: the certificate is meant to mean that somebody watched you do it properly.

What you receive is a Canadian Red Cross CPR Level A & AED certificate. The validity period is set by the Canadian Red Cross and printed on the certificate itself, so read the date the day you get it and put it in your calendar rather than trusting your memory later on. We will confirm the current period with you at registration. Renewing before the date passes is always simpler than letting it lapse.

Do not guess at what they meant. Requirements come from employers, prime contractors, site safety managers, licensing bodies, sports organizations, volunteer coordinators and insurers, and each of them writes their own and changes it when it suits them. We will not tell you that this course satisfies a particular requirement, regulation or standard, because that claim belongs to whoever wrote the rule and not to a training provider. What we will do is read the exact wording you were given and tell you honestly what it points at.

The wording is usually the whole problem. "Must hold current CPR" and "CPR/AED certification required" do not say which level, and they do not say whether first aid is included. Two questions solve it: which CPR level, and does the requirement include first aid as well. Ask the person who gave you the sentence, not the internet.

Send us a screenshot, a job posting, a policy paragraph or a forwarded email. We are asked this constantly and we do not need you to tidy it up first. Sometimes the answer is that Level A is exactly right. Sometimes the answer is Level C, and sometimes the answer is that you actually need a first aid course with CPR built into it.

The answer will sometimes be that we are not the right provider for what you have been asked for. We will say so, and we will tell you what to search for instead. A wasted registration helps nobody, least of all us.

Your fee includes a hard-shell pocket mask: the real clamshell mouth-to-mask device, with the one-way filter valve, the elastic strap and the case. It comes out of its packaging in class, you train with it on the manikins, and then it goes home with you.

Nobody hands you a mask another class used and wiped down. Yours is new, and after the course it lives wherever you might one day need it: the kitchen drawer, the glovebox, the first aid kit at work.