The order matters because each step patches the gap the one before it leaves. A free video builds the rhythm tonight, a paid course corrects it against a manikin, the kit gets stocked only once you know what you actually reach for, the two time-critical emergencies get drilled on top of that, and teaching it out loud is what proves you know it.
Step 1: Watch the video before you pay
Video comes first because it costs nothing, takes twenty minutes, and gives you the one thing reading cannot: the rhythm. Watch one full demonstration from a recognised provider such as the Red Cross or a national resuscitation council, then watch it a second time kneeling on the floor with a cushion in front of you. Stack your hands on the centre of the cushion, lock your elbows, and press to the beat of 'Stayin' Alive' — roughly 100 to 120 compressions a minute, about a third of the cushion's depth. Passive viewing is where most people stop; they finish the video feeling informed but have never once pressed down on anything. This is not certification and is not meant to be — it is a rehearsal you can do tonight, before step 2 puts a real instructor beside you.
Step 2: Get Certified, Not Just Informed
By now you know the tempo but not whether your hands land in the right place, and no video can tell you that. A certified course puts a manikin in front of you and an instructor who corrects you aloud, usually the moment you go too shallow or forget to let the chest come all the way back up. Book an in-person course with a practical assessment — Red Cross, St John Ambulance, or your local hospital's community programme — and choose a date within the next two weeks, because a date you never set is a course you never take. Bring the questions the video left open: how hard is too hard on a child, when is it safe to stop, what do I say when I call for help. An online-only certificate feels efficient but leaves nobody checking your compression depth.
Step 3: Stock The Kit You'll Reach For
The course just showed you what people actually fumble for in an emergency, which is why the kit comes third rather than first — a box assembled before training fills up with things you never reach for. Build it in a plain lidded container: assorted adhesive dressings, gauze swabs, a conforming bandage, an elastic bandage, medical tape, antiseptic, saline for wound irrigation, tweezers, blunt scissors, disposable gloves, a thermometer, an instant cold pack, oral rehydration salts. Tape an index card inside the lid listing every item and its expiry date. Store it somewhere a visitor could find it, like a kitchen cupboard at waist height, not a locked bathroom cabinet. The recurring failure here is buying a sealed pre-made kit and never opening it, so nothing inside is familiar when hands are shaking.
Step 4: Choking And Allergic Reactions
Choking and anaphylaxis are the two situations where minutes decide the outcome, and both depend on the kit you just built and the training from step 2. For choking, adults get back blows followed by abdominal thrusts, while infants get back blows followed by chest thrusts — different hand position, very different force. Ask your instructor to let you rehearse the infant version on a manikin, because it is the one most adults have never physically tried. For allergic reactions, learn to spot hives, swelling of the lips or throat, and difficulty breathing, and find out where each family member's adrenaline auto-injector is kept and how it is held. People get this wrong by memorising the adult technique and applying it to a five-year-old, or by waiting to see whether the reaction settles on its own.
Step 5: Teach It Out Loud To Everyone
Teaching turns one person's knowledge into a household's, and it exposes the gaps you did not notice you had. Call everyone into the kitchen for thirty minutes. Open the kit and name each item and where it lives. Take turns practising back blows on each other, and let someone else count the compression tempo out loud. Have every person, including children old enough to dial, say the emergency number and their full address without looking it up. Then swap roles and let the least confident person run the whole sequence while you stay quiet. The failure mode is demonstrating at your family instead of letting them put their hands on something — watching is not the same as doing, and a person who has only watched tends to freeze.
A reminder on a phone vanishes the second you dismiss it and leaves nothing behind. A paper strip taped above the kitchen cupboard stays in view, visibly gets shorter as you cut steps off, and only disappears when the last one is done.