First Aid
EFAW vs First Aid at Work: Which Course Does Your Workplace Need?
This guide is for general information only and doesn't replace hands-on, accredited first aid training. In a medical emergency, always call 999 (or 112) immediately.
If you’ve started looking into first aid training for your business, you’ve probably come across two very similar-sounding names: Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW) and First Aid at Work (FAW). They sound close, but they’re different courses, built for different levels of risk, and picking the wrong one either leaves your business under-covered or has you paying for more training than you need.
The short version
EFAW is a one-day course. It covers the essentials: CPR, using a defibrillator, dealing with choking, and managing severe bleeding. It’s built to give someone the tools to respond to the most common, most urgent emergencies.
FAW is a three-day course (with a two-day requalification once you’re already certified). It covers everything in EFAW, plus how to recognise and respond to a much wider range of medical emergencies: allergic reactions, asthma attacks, fainting, stroke, poisoning, and diabetic emergencies caused by low blood sugar. It’s built for workplaces where a wider range of things can go wrong, and where help might take longer to arrive.
How to tell which one you need
The Health and Safety Executive doesn’t dictate first aid provision by a fixed rulebook. It asks every employer to run a first aid needs assessment and provide cover appropriate to the risks in their own workplace. In practice, that tends to split along these lines:
Lower-risk environments, offices, shops, libraries, and other workplaces where the main risks are things like minor cuts, trips, or someone feeling unwell, are usually well served by EFAW. It’s enough first aid knowledge to respond to an emergency while help is on the way, without training people for scenarios they’re unlikely to face.
Higher-risk workplaces, construction sites, warehouses, manufacturing floors, or anywhere involving machinery, height, extreme temperatures, or hazardous substances, usually call for FAW. The broader syllabus matters more when the range of possible injuries is wider, and FAW-trained staff are also better placed to act as the senior first aider across a larger site or multiple shifts.
Both certificates are valid for three years. Neither one is “better”, they’re matched to different levels of risk, and the right call comes down to what your needs assessment actually shows, not which course sounds more thorough.
If you’re not sure which one fits your business, this is exactly the kind of thing a first aid needs assessment is for, and it’s worth getting right before you book training rather than after.
Ready to book the right course?
We run both Emergency First Aid at Work and First Aid at Work, in our classroom or on-site at yours.
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