Basic First Aid in Calgary (formerly Emergency First Aid), with CPR-A

The Canadian Red Cross renamed Emergency First Aid to Basic First Aid when it restructured the names of its first aid levels. Nothing about where the course sits changed. It is still the short, entry-level certificate with CPR included, one step below the general-purpose two-day course and several steps below the responder-level programs. We list both names on this page because both names are still in daily use and because people search for the old one far more often than the new one.

The rename causes more trouble than a rename should, and it is worth being blunt about why. Your employer's safety binder, a job posting, a volunteer coordinator's checklist or a school handout may still say Emergency First Aid, or EFA. The card you receive from us will say Basic First Aid. Those are the same thing, and if someone questions it, send them the certificate and tell them it is the current Canadian Red Cross name for that level. If it is a hard requirement with a deadline attached, get written confirmation from whoever set the requirement before you register rather than after you have spent the day.

There is a second confusion built into the new name, and it catches people every week. Basic First Aid is not Basic Life Support. They share a word and nothing else. Basic Life Support is provider-level CPR for clinical and professional responder roles, it carries a different certificate with a different expiry, and if your employer's wording says BLS then this page is not the course you are looking for. Book the wrong one and you lose the day and the fee.

The rest of the ladder moved too, which is why nothing you were told a few years ago quite matches what you see now. The course that used to be Standard First Aid is now called Intermediate First Aid. So if you are holding an instruction that names Emergency First Aid or Standard First Aid, you are reading old vocabulary against a new catalogue. Work out which level is actually being asked for before you pick a date.

This is a single in-person day of roughly seven hours, and it is a working day rather than a lecture. Expect to be down on the floor with a manikin for a large part of it, expect your knees to know about it afterwards, and expect to do each skill more than once. Seven hours sounds like plenty until you are in it. It is enough time to make the core skills automatic and not much more, which is exactly the trade you are making when you choose the short course. Hours are set by the Canadian Red Cross and can change, so the exact hours and start time are published with each date under Upcoming dates, and the ones on the date you pick are the ones that hold.

The shape of the day is the first few minutes of an emergency, drilled until the sequence is automatic rather than something you have to think your way through. The Canadian Red Cross owns this curriculum and sets its content and order, so we are not going to publish our own version of their lesson list here. If a safety manager or a hiring file needs the current official outline, ask us and we will point you at the official Red Cross course description, which is the only version that stays current.

CPR at level A is part of the course, so you are not booking or paying for CPR separately. Level A is adult CPR, and it is the lowest of the CPR levels. That pairing is deliberate rather than a compromise: Basic First Aid is the shortest workplace first aid course we run, and it carries the lowest CPR level on purpose. If you were told to get a minimum, this is the minimum. Whether it is the minimum YOUR employer will accept is their call, not ours. If what you need is adult, child and infant CPR, that is level C, and the route to it is the two-day Intermediate First Aid course rather than this one. If your requirement names an AED specifically, send us the exact wording before you book: we will confirm what the current Red Cross version of this course includes, and if AED is the whole of what you were asked for, the CPR-A and AED session carries it on the certificate itself. And to say it once more, because it is the single most expensive mistake made on this page: no level of CPR is Basic Life Support.

What our instructors add is the part a manual cannot. They work as paramedics, firefighters and emergency professionals, and owner Jarrett Chisholm is an Advanced Care Paramedic. So when somebody asks what compressions really feel like on a real chest, or what an arriving crew wants to hear first, or whether it is worth starting CPR when you are not certain, the answer comes from someone who has been in the room. On a one-day course that context is most of the value.

We would rather say this early than take your money for the wrong day. Basic First Aid is the shorter course, and the two-day level, Intermediate First Aid, which people still call Standard First Aid, is the one we are regularly asked about by people whose paperwork turned out to name it. If you are a designated first aid attendant, if your site has any real hazard to it, or if the instruction you were given did not specify a level, the two-day course may well be what is actually wanted. Booking this one and discovering that later costs you the fee, the day off, and the start date you were trying to hit.

So read the wording you were given, and read it literally. If it names Emergency First Aid or Basic First Aid, you are on the right page. If it names Standard First Aid, Intermediate First Aid, a number of hours in the teens, or two days, you are not. If it names BLS, healthcare provider CPR, or anything with the word provider in it, you want Basic Life Support. If it names Advanced First Aid or a responder-level certificate, this course is nowhere near it.

A few other mismatches come up often enough to list. Licensed child care often has its own wording and there is a child care specific version of the training, so check with your licensing body or employer before booking anything general. Clinical and care-facing roles often name provider-level CPR rather than a general first aid course. Industrial, remote and camp work often names something considerably longer, because the gap between your hands and a hospital is the thing that sets the requirement, but only the body that wrote your requirement can tell you.

Where Basic First Aid does fit cleanly: a lower-risk workplace that has specified the entry level, a volunteer or coaching role that asks for a current certificate without naming a level, a household that wants the core skills, or someone who needs to be certified quickly and has confirmed the short course is acceptable. If you are not certain which of those describes you, send us the exact wording you were given. We will read it and tell you honestly which course it points to, including when the answer is that this is not the right course, or that a cheaper one would have done.

Tuition is $120 plus GST at the time of writing. Treat that as a reference figure rather than a final price: confirm the current amount, what is included with it, and the refund and transfer terms at registration or with us directly before you pay. The same goes for the schedule. Dates and daily start times are published with each scheduled run, and if nothing is listed yet for the window you need, or you are asking about Leduc and the greater Edmonton area, tell us what you need and we will say what is workable rather than leaving you guessing.

Attending is not the same as being certified, and on a one-day course that distinction bites harder than it does on a long one. Certification requires full attendance and an evaluated performance of the required skills in front of an instructor. There is no spare afternoon to make up a missed hour. If something comes up, tell us as early as you can and we will work out how you finish properly. We will not sign off on skills someone did not demonstrate, because a card that overstates what you can do is worse than no card at all.

The Canadian Red Cross sets the validity period and prints the expiry on the certificate itself, so the date on your card is the date that counts. It currently runs three years. Put that expiry in your calendar the week you finish, with a reminder a few months ahead, because first aid cards have a habit of being fine right up until the morning someone asks to see one. To renew, book Basic First Aid Recertification, a class of about four hours, on a date before your expiry. It is only for a certificate that has not expired yet. Once the date passes, the Red Cross does not allow a recertification and this full course is the way back.

Register with your legal name spelled the way an employer or a hiring file will expect to see it, and use an email address you actually read, since that is where your certificate details go. Correcting a misspelled name afterwards takes considerably longer than typing it carefully once.

We will not tell you that this course satisfies your particular workplace, regulatory or school requirement, and you should be wary of any training provider that does. Requirements in Alberta come from a mix of occupational health and safety rules, industry practice, prime contractors and individual employers, and what counts as adequate coverage on a given site depends on the hazards, the crew size and how far that site is from medical care. The body that wrote your requirement is the only one that can tell you what meets it.

When you ask them, ask for four specific things: the exact course name they will accept, the CPR level required, whether a particular certifying body is required, and how many hours or days the course must be. Those four answers settle it every time. Get them in writing if a job offer, a contract or a start date depends on the outcome.

Schools, colleges and volunteer organisations work the same way. Some name a level, some name only a certificate, and some require the certificate to still be valid on a particular date rather than merely to exist. Check the page for your exact program and your exact intake year, and confirm with the admissions or volunteer office, because these details change quietly between cycles.

As a pathway, Basic First Aid is the first rung and it stacks sensibly. Plenty of people take it, use it, and later move up to the two-day Intermediate level when a new role asks for more, or add provider-level CPR alongside it. Nothing here is wasted if you go further later. It is only wasted if you buy it instead of the thing you were actually asked for, which is the entire reason this page keeps saying so.

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.