16 hour Outdoor First Aid Course Level 3 (VTQ)
…the experience of the course itself. The experience that tends to stick and the confidence that starts to matter.
You have to make decisions, communicate, work with the people around you and think about the environment as well as the casualty.
That’s when outdoor first aid training becomes an experience rather than just a list of things to remember.
What is important to remember is if you’re going to spend 16 hours with us learning how to deal with emergencies outdoors, we’d much rather you were engaged, involved and actually enjoying the experience.
People talk, they share experiences. They ask questions that come from their own lives. They compare situations they’ve encountered and they challenge each other and often there’s a lot of laughter and that’s important too.
Good training doesn’t have to be boring to be serious.
In fact, one learner who completed our 8-hour outdoor course this year described it as:
“A fun and informative day”
and called Dave a “charismatic and interesting trainer”.
We’ll happily take that.
The forest becomes part of the memory of a 16 hour Outdoor first aid class
There’s a reason we use the forest as our classroom. When you’re outdoors, the environment becomes part of the learning. You remember the forest, the sights, the sounds, the smells. Those link to remembering what you had to think about, how you communicated with your group. You remember the casualty, the weather and the moment when you suddenly realised, actually, I can do this.
One learner described our 16 hour outdoor course as:
“First responder training where you need it most, in the outdoors.”
They went on to say it felt closer to the beginning of a first responder journey than traditional first aid training.
That’s a pretty good description of what we’re trying to achieve. Not perfect recall of every slide. Not simply being able to repeat a procedure because you learned it yesterday. It’s about building the knowledge, judgement and confidence to do something useful when someone needs you.
Looking back at some of the feedback from this year’s outdoor courses, a few themes keep appearing.
One learner described the course as:
“The immersive experience of live casualties really helped build confidence.”
Another said Dave’s personal experience helped to build realistic scenarios and answer questions in a way that made the training more effective.
And perhaps one of the most telling comments came from someone who had completed eight first aid courses over the last decade.
Their verdict?
“This is by far the best!”
They went on to highlight how the course worked for both experienced first aiders and first-time learners, particularly because of the way real knowledge and experience were brought into the training.
That’s something we’re quite passionate about at DAC.
The end of our outdoor first aid training season is approaching
There is a slightly strange thing about running an outdoor first aid course in the UK, eventually, the calendar wins.
Our outdoor first aid courses are deliberately taught outside, which means we don’t run them through the winter. The days become too short and the conditions make spending two full days in the forest less practical.
We could move indoors but then we’d lose a big part of the experience. So the outdoor courses take a winter break and return in spring.
Before we put the outdoor training kit away for the season, though, we have two final dates:
10–11 September 2026
8–9 October 2026
After that, the next Outdoor First Aid course will be in March 2027.
So if you’ve been thinking about doing your outdoor first aid training, these are the final two opportunities to join us in the forest this year.
And perhaps the question to ask yourself isn’t:
“What will I learn on a first aid course?”
Maybe it’s:
“What will I still remember when I actually need it?”
That’s the bit we’re interested in.
