European First Aid
European First Aid certificate
SAMARITAN INTERNATIONAL has been actively advocating for a single European First Aid Certificate for many years. The member organisations of SAM.I. offer their local population first aid training according to comparable standards, which are recognised by our working group, the CC First Aid, to be based on the same state-of-the-art of emergency medicine, such as defined by the European Resuscitation Council. This internal recognition is a practical initiative toward the goal of European wide mutual recognition of national first aid certificates.
Such a mutual recognition of first aid certificates within the European Union should be based on defined high-quality learning results and the European Qualifications Framework.
SAM.I. not only advocates for the European certificate, but also actively promotes the learning of first aid skills as an expression of civic engagement. Part of these efforts are regularly organised first aid courses at the European Parliament and the Samaritan Contest, where the youth of SAM.I. member organisations test and demonstrate their first aid skills against each other.
In several Erasmus+ co-fianced projects Samaritan International has worked and continues to work towards the improvement of first aid education – by inclusion of digital elements and technological developments in the design of first aid courses, as well by making the courses as inclusive as possible.