This thesis is about the provision of first aid and the changing roles of first aid practitioners and healthcare professionals in an ecology of healthcare. Rather than treating first aid as a fixed body of knowledge to be instilled in first aid practitioners and healthcare professionals through training and courses, I focus on how the boundaries of first aid and help are constituted and enacted and how expertise is distributed between professionals and practitioners. As I show, the spatial and temporal organisation of first aid is crucial for actual and potential patients and the careers of The British Red Cross volunteers. To capture aspects of this dynamic, I make use of Bowker and Star’s (1999) account of boundaries and categories, Lave and Wenger’s (1991) work on situated learning and Abbott’s (1988) concept of professionalisation.

This thesis is based on an empirical study of The British Red Cross Event First Aid Service. This service provided medical support for major sporting and leisure events until it was disbanded in 2020. As well as observing five events between August - November 2019, I interviewed ten first aid volunteers, attended The British Red Cross training programmes and conferences, and gathered secondary sources and historical materials relating to the development of The British Red Cross and related parts of the healthcare system, particularly the history of the UK ambulance service.

Together, these materials help to show that the provision of first aid is situated within a wider ‘ecology’ of care that continues to evolve. I argue that the structure of this ecology matters for the day-to-day experience of volunteers, what they do, how their careers are organised, and for how first aid is delivered in space and time. The thesis concludes that first aid is a product of these arrangements and of situated but always dynamic relations between the careers of professionals and volunteers.


Key words: first-aid, healthcare, organisation, boundaries