Letter from the Editors

Welcome to the first aid journal and our first new-look issue of 2023! Following a short pause during which we have ‘moved house’ to our new publisher, Aperio, we are back up and running and ready to improve the world with first aid education. We’re delighted that you’re reading this. We hope that you will subscribe (for free) if you haven’t already, and feel motivated to contribute through authorship and by using your networks and channels to encourage others to do the same. We are ambitious to drive up our readership and in doing so to facilitate first aid learning which puts one of the greatest sets of life skills into the hands of people everywhere. But we need your help.

Resiliency can be understood as the ability to resume life after an adverse event. In the early years of this journal the world has seen some tremendously adverse events – from global pandemics to environmental catastrophe to brutal conflict and war. Yet the unimaginable suffering that these events have caused to individuals, families, communities and whole populations has not quelled the determination of those same people to find resiliency.

First aid promotes resiliency by providing a tangible and immediate tool for reducing harm and promoting recovery. This has been a part of human history, with people taking care of each other, recovering, and coming out stronger.

When we started this journal in 2017, our focus was on optimizing first aid for individuals receiving and providing it through evidence-based practices and education. We took the Chain of Survival Behaviors as our motif, using it as scaffolding on which to explore, examine and expand the concept of first aid. We used it to encourage scholarship beyond the pure application of treatment, looking back at the roles of prevention and preparedness, and forward to recovery and the ability to resume life.

Articles published in the journal to date have spanned the domains of the chain, and as we look ahead to our next phase, we encourage you to think about what first aid really means to you: is it a basic level of medical care when there’s no doctor or equipment close by? Or a public health necessity that reduces the burden on health systems and supports communities? Is its application a psychological challenge for the first aider or an automatic and natural reaction in a moment when there is clearly no choice but to help?

First aid research, for both education and medical application, is still in its infancy. We urge readers to consider doing more research into this deep, multi-faceted, and ultimately indispensable topic. Studies which explore the scalability of learning first aid hone in on evidence for specific skills and tools, test new technologies, dig into the minds of rescuers and bystanders, and equip us to be more resilient can only be helpful for humankind.

The IJFAE has received a welcome uplift which affords new opportunities to reach new audiences. As we, its dedicated team of volunteer editors bask in the sunshine of this milestone, we invite you to help us to reach the next one on our list – to get indexed! To do that we need more articles and more citations, so we end this editorial with a courteous but heartfelt request that you share and promote this journal wherever you can and join us on our journey to the next stage.