Back awhile ago I wrote a bit about "questionable" re-certification practices. My concern then and now was the fact that often no (or very little) training took place. Money changes hands and a bit of theory might be covered over beers or coffee.
Not good!
The industry agencies providing the certification is taking notice. It's the good instructors that are getting the rap on the knuckles with ever increasing policies that make it harder and harder to serve the market.
I'm going to focus on first aid.
A good re-certification should, in my humble opinion, cover/review all the material with perhaps a little more depth for those who perform first aid at work. There needs to be plenty of practice on all the skills; professional first-aiders would want to take their skills to the next level and perhaps lose some bad habits. Consistency might be a goal as well. Things change in first aid; you need to be on top of this. Scenarios- yes they put it all together; include these!
The challenge is to determine the time-lines.
When you have 12 - 18 candidates, it's going to take all day for a EFA and certainly a full 16 hours for a SFA. Maybe longer.
We don't want to create a race to the bottom with our time-lines (faster cheaper, easier) , nor do we want to burn out the student with information overload either. 12 hours of class time is too long. Nine hours with a lunch break is about what the market will bear; most companies want it done in 8 hours for a EFA.
What do we do with the small classes? Do 6 students take half the time of 12? No, and that is of course a dangerous argument. Lectures/videos take as long as they take no matter how many students you have.
We can however set how many activities, and how much time a student needs to spend on each skill and activity, and how many scenarios each student should participate in.
Why would we expect a student to perform extra and longer activities in small classes and then short change the students in larger classes? Students will complain if the CPR goes on too long - their wrists hurt. Two minutes is the standard for each student; generally you can get them to do more, by spreading it out, but to a limit.
Could the industry look at this? Some clients wish to take private and semi-private classes. These classes are very thorough. There is no "wait for your turn" time.
Everyone gets their own manikins now; in prior years the ratio was up to 4:1, and all we did was wipe the doll's mouth - no consideration for lung blow back. That ratio created longer classes.
Setting only the class length as a standard has problems. Let's set the standard on the individual components for each student that add up to a great training session.