What BLS Training Do GP Practices & Dental Teams Need?

Basic Life Support training in primary care is about more than ensuring that a doctor or nurse remembers how to perform CPR. A real emergency may involve the entire practice team: recognising that somebody has collapsed, calling 999, beginning CPR, retrieving the AED and emergency equipment, managing other patients and preparing for the ambulance crew.

For that reason, effective BLS training for GP practices should be considered as part of the organisation’s wider emergency response rather than simply as an annual certificate exercise.

How often should GP practice staff update BLS training?

Resuscitation Council UK states that all staff in a primary care organisation, including non-clinical staff, should receive regular resuscitation training appropriate to their role. Clinical staff should have at least annual updates, while non-clinical staff generally should also receive annual updates, subject to local risk assessment.¹

For clinical staff, Resuscitation Council UK specifically recommends hands-on training using simulation and including assessment.¹

Why e-learning alone is not enough

E-learning can be an effective way to introduce knowledge, refresh theory and form part of induction. Resuscitation Council UK recognises e-learning alongside life-support courses, simulation, mock drills and other methods of maintaining knowledge and skills.¹

There is, however, an obvious difference between understanding CPR on a screen and physically performing chest compressions on a manikin.

Practical training gives learners an opportunity to experience compression depth and rhythm, positioning, AED operation and the physical process of responding to a collapsed casualty.

Who should receive BLS training in a GP practice?

In practice, we commonly see the annual session treated as a whole-practice training event rather than something reserved solely for GPs and nurses.

Depending on who is working in the practice on the training day, attendees may include GP partners, salaried GPs, GP registrars, Foundation doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, practice managers, receptionists and administrative employees.

That broad approach is consistent with Resuscitation Council UK guidance. It states that all staff within a primary care organisation, including non-clinical employees, should receive regular resuscitation training at a level appropriate to their expected role.¹

Why training reception and administrative staff matters

A patient does not necessarily collapse while sitting opposite a doctor.

An emergency may begin at reception, in the waiting room, in a corridor or outside the practice. The first person present may therefore be a receptionist, administrator or another non-clinical member of staff.

There is also no reason to assume that the most senior employee should automatically be the person carrying out chest compressions.

A trained receptionist or administrator may be able to begin or continue CPR while an appropriately skilled clinician takes a broader view of the patient’s condition and coordinates the clinical response.

Meanwhile, the Practice Manager or another senior employee may be needed to manage everything else that suddenly has to happen: clearing or protecting the immediate area, dealing with other patients, managing access to the building, supporting staff and preparing for the arrival of the ambulance.

A cardiac arrest is a team event

Resuscitation Council UK says each practice should plan for the need to attempt resuscitation and staff should understand the role they may be expected to undertake. It also recognises that available skills and numbers will vary, meaning team members may need to be flexible within the boundaries of their competence.¹

That makes whole-practice training useful for another reason: it creates an opportunity to think beyond the individual performing CPR.

The answers do not need to be rigid. What matters is that the practice has considered how its team could respond rather than discovering the problem for the first time during a real emergency.

What should practical BLS training cover?

Primary care may involve patients across the age range. Practical training therefore needs to reflect the people the organisation may be required to assist.

The clinical-practice qualification discussed in this article covers BLS and the management of anaphylaxis for adults, children and infants.

Relevant practical training may therefore include:

Why include anaphylaxis in the practical session?

Primary-care emergency preparedness is not restricted to cardiac arrest.

Resuscitation Council UK’s primary-care equipment standards specifically recognise that organisations also require appropriate equipment and drugs for the management of other life-threatening emergencies, including anaphylaxis.²

Combining practical BLS and anaphylaxis training therefore gives practices an opportunity to consider two significant emergency situations within the same overall training programme.

The practical session should sit alongside the practice’s own clinical governance arrangements, emergency medicines procedures and the scope of practice of individual staff.

Hands-on time matters

BLS is a practical skill. A learner gains very little from spending most of the session watching somebody else perform CPR while waiting for access to a training manikin.

The Hive therefore maintains a substantial stock of CPR training manikins, including Little Anne equipment.

For many of our practice sessions, learner numbers allow us to provide an individual manikin to each person so that significantly more of the session can be spent actually practising. Equipment allocation will always depend on the group size and particular training arrangements, but our aim is to maximise hands-on time.

Training is only useful if the emergency equipment is ready

Annual BLS training is only one part of emergency preparedness.

Resuscitation Council UK states that primary-care providers should ensure staff have immediate access to appropriate resuscitation equipment and drugs. It also requires a reliable system for equipment checks and replacement, allocated to named individuals with arrangements for absence cover.²

The frequency depends on local circumstances, but RCUK says these checks should take place at least weekly.²

The manufacturer’s requirements for storage, servicing and expiry must also be followed.²

Should a practice have a separate staff First Aid kit and emergency-response kit?

This is an area where it is useful to distinguish regulatory requirements from practical organisational design.

HSE requires employers to make adequate workplace First Aid arrangements for employees. Its guidance says first-aid kits should be readily accessible, checked frequently and restocked after use. It also recognises that additional materials and equipment may be stored separately where appropriate.⁴

What if somebody asks to borrow the practice AED?

Consider a situation that could easily arise.

A member of the public enters reception and says that their wife has collapsed at home. They believe the surgery has a defibrillator and ask:

“Can I borrow your AED?”

Perhaps their home is half a mile away and they intend to put the AED in the car and drive back.

There is no simple universal answer to that situation. It immediately raises a number of competing considerations.

A suspected cardiac arrest is time-critical. Emergency services should be contacted immediately, and the practice will naturally want to consider what immediate assistance can safely and reasonably be provided.

But if the AED leaves with a member of the public, the practice temporarily loses access to that equipment. If a clinician or other member of staff accompanies it, the practice also loses that employee for an uncertain period.

The practice therefore has to consider not merely whether it is willing to help, but how an off-site request would be managed safely and sensibly.

A practice may never face this exact scenario. The value lies in having considered the underlying questions before a distressed member of the public is standing at reception asking for immediate help.

How far should a GP practice emergency response extend?

This is another question for which an absolute rule would be unhelpful.

There is an obvious practical difference between somebody collapsing in the practice car park and a request for staff to leave the surgery, travel some distance down the road and enter a private residence.

Relevant considerations may include the location of the casualty, immediate safety, staffing levels, the needs of patients who remain within the practice, the availability of emergency services and the clinical judgement of the professionals involved.

A useful risk-management question is therefore:

That discussion can form part of the practice’s wider emergency planning rather than being left until an unusual incident actually occurs.

What about BLS training for dental practices?

Resuscitation Council UK has separate quality standards for primary dental care.

Dental practitioners and other dental care professionals should be able to recognise cardiorespiratory arrest, call 999, begin CPR and attempt appropriate defibrillation using an AED. Staff working with children should understand and practise the differences between adult and paediatric CPR.³

RCUK says dental staff’s resuscitation knowledge and skills should be updated at least annually, with hands-on simulation training and assessment recommended for clinical staff.³

The dental standards also specify weekly, as a minimum, checks of resuscitation equipment and include staff debriefing following a cardiorespiratory arrest.³

Whole-practice training can also be efficient

Sending 20 or 25 employees individually to external training can involve course fees, travel and considerable time away from the practice.

Onsite training allows larger practices to take a different approach. Depending on learner numbers, qualification requirements and trainer-to-learner arrangements, teams may be divided between two practical sessions or another suitable delivery structure.

This can make it practical to train a much wider proportion of the practice team rather than restricting attendance simply to keep costs manageable.

For us, that is one of the strongest arguments for whole-practice BLS: broader participation does not necessarily have to mean disproportionately greater disruption or cost.

BLS training is only one part of being prepared

A practice can have an AED on the wall and still be poorly prepared for a real resuscitation emergency.

Good preparation means considering the people, equipment and decisions around the emergency as well as the technical skill of CPR.

That includes training clinical and non-clinical staff appropriately, practising adult, child and infant BLS, understanding AED use and anaphylaxis, checking emergency equipment, planning team roles and considering less obvious situations such as equipment leaving the premises.

It also means recognising that an actual resuscitation attempt can affect the people involved and providing appropriate opportunities to review and discuss what happened afterwards.

The central question is therefore not simply:

“Have our staff completed their BLS training?”

A better question may be: