First Aid Trivia
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8correct to beat the crowd
This first aid trivia quiz has 198 free questions with answers and covers the skills every bystander should know and the stories behind them. You will be asked about current CPR guidance (how fast, how deep, and why the order changed in 2010), what an AED can and cannot shock, how to help someone who is choking, and the right way to treat a burn, a nosebleed, a sprain, a snakebite or a tick. It is written for first aid learners, teachers running a refresher, trivia hosts who want a health round, and anyone curious about where ideas like the recovery position, the FAST stroke test or the RICE protocol came from. Along the way you will meet Henry Dunant at Solferino, the Prussian surgeon who coined the term, the drowned woman whose face became the CPR mannequin, and the London fire that gave the world its first emergency phone number. Every answer was checked against a reference page that reflects current resuscitation and first aid guidance, so the facts here are safe to remember, not just fun to know. It is a quiz, not training, so take a real course too.
30 of 198 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Friedrich von Esmarch, who pioneered first aid training for soldiers around 1870, was a military surgeon in which country's army?
Prussia
Prussia. Esmarch was the Prussian army's surgeon-general in the war of 1870–71, when soldiers were drilled to bandage and splint wounded comrades; the first aid manuals he wrote afterwards were translated around the world.
Q 02The 1877 St John Ambulance Association taught first aid in railway centres and which other workplaces?
Mining districts
Mining districts. The Order of St John set up its classes in the big railway centres and the coalfields so that railwaymen and colliers could give first aid to workmates hurt in accidents.
Q 03Because the red cross emblem is protected by law, first aid signs show a white cross on which colour?
Green
Green. The red cross is reserved for military medics and the Red Cross itself, so the international first aid sign is a white cross on green, the colour also used for fire exit signs.
Q 04Napoleon's surgeon Larrey created an ambulance corps known by what French name?
Ambulances volantes
Ambulances volantes, 'flying ambulances': horse-drawn wagons modelled on the army's fast 'flying artillery', which Larrey introduced in 1793 to fetch the wounded during the fighting instead of after it.
Q 05How many chest compressions per minute do adult CPR guidelines recommend?
100–120
100–120 a minute, about two pushes a second: go faster and the heart cannot refill between compressions, and because rescuers tire quickly, helpers are told to swap every minute or two.
Q 06How deep should chest compressions be pushed on an adult?
5–6 cm
5–6 cm, roughly a third of the depth of the chest: rescuers are taught that pressing too hard beats pressing too soft, because shallow compressions do not work, even though a rib sometimes cracks.
Q 07What compression-to-breath ratio do guidelines recommend for a single rescuer giving adult CPR?
30:2
30:2: thirty compressions, then two breaths. The long run matters because every pause stops blood moving, so a rescuer gets two attempts at the breaths and then goes straight back to pushing, whether or not they went in.
Q 08For untrained bystanders helping an adult in cardiac arrest, which form of CPR do guidelines recommend?
Compression-only (hands-only)
Compression-only (hands-only) CPR is easier to do and far easier for a call handler to coach over the phone, and for an adult who collapses it has saved at least as many lives as CPR with breaths.
Q 09In 2010, resuscitation guidelines changed the order of CPR steps for all but newborns from ABC to what?
CAB
CAB: Compressions, Airway, Breathing. Rescuers who opened the airway first were slow to start pushing, so the 2010 guidelines put compressions first to get blood moving at once.
Q 10Which Bee Gees song is famously used as a tempo guide for CPR chest compressions?
Stayin' Alive
Stayin' Alive has a beat at the pace rescuers are taught, and in a University of Illinois study medical staff who practised to it still kept the right rate weeks later with the song only in their heads.
Q 11Which heart rhythm will an AED refuse to shock, despite what television dramas suggest?
Asystole (flatline)
Asystole (flatline) leaves no electrical activity for a shock to reset, so the AED announces that no shock is advised and the rescuer carries on with CPR; a shock only helps a heart that is still quivering.
Q 12What does a defibrillator shock do to the heart's electrical activity?
Stops it momentarily
Stops it momentarily. The shock depolarises much of the heart muscle at once, silencing the chaotic signals for an instant so that the heart's natural pacemaker, the sinoatrial node, can take charge again.
Q 13The portable external defibrillator was invented by cardiologist Frank Pantridge in which city?
Q 21An adrenaline auto-injector for anaphylaxis is designed to be fired into which part of the body?
Thigh
Thigh. The injector is pressed into the middle of the outer thigh, and if nothing has improved within minutes a second one is used; antihistamines play only a supporting part.
Q 22After adrenaline works, anaphylaxis patients are watched for hours in case of what?
A relapse
A relapse: in biphasic anaphylaxis the symptoms flare up again hours after they have settled, which is why a second dose of adrenaline is given if they return.
Q 23In 1901 Red Cross founder Henry Dunant shared one of the very first Nobel Prizes, in which category?
Peace
Peace. The first Peace Prize was split between Dunant, honoured for helping wounded soldiers, and the French campaigner Frédéric Passy, honoured for peace congresses and arbitration: one humanitarian and one peacemaker.
Belfast
Belfast. Working at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Pantridge fitted a portable defibrillator into an ambulance in the 1960s, so that hearts could be shocked at the roadside instead of waiting for the patient to reach a ward.
Q 14In 1947 Claude Beck's defibrillator saved its first patient, whose heart stopped during what?
An operation
An operation. The 14-year-old's heart stopped as surgeons were closing his chest, so Beck reopened it, massaged the heart by hand until the defibrillator was ready, and shocked it back into rhythm; the boy recovered.
Q 15First aiders are taught the checklist DR ABC; what does the D stand for?
Danger
Danger. Before going near a casualty, the rescuer checks that whatever hurt them cannot hurt anyone else, because a second casualty helps nobody; R is for response, and only then do the ABC checks begin.
Q 16For a choking adult, guidelines recommend cycles of how many back blows and the same number of abdominal thrusts?
Five
Five. The 'five and five' drill is five sharp blows between the shoulder blades with the heel of the hand, then five abdominal thrusts, checking the mouth and repeating until the blockage clears.
Q 17What should a choking person who can still speak and breathe be encouraged to do first?
Keep coughing
Keep coughing. A strong cough is the body's own best way of shifting a blockage, so first aiders step in with back blows only once the person can no longer cough, speak or breathe.
Q 18Which of these kitchen items do first aid guidelines warn against putting on a burn?
Butter
Butter. Fats and creams can do further damage and raise the risk of infection; the advice is cool running water for 20 minutes, then a loose layer of cling film, or a clean plastic bag over a burned hand.
Q 19Under the adult rule of nines, each whole leg counts as what share of body surface?
18%
18%. Each arm and the head count as 9% and the front and back of the trunk as 18% each; a child's chart differs, because the head takes up far more of a small body and the legs less.
Q 20In the RICE mnemonic for treating a sprain, what does the E stand for?
Elevation
Elevation. Propping the injured limb above heart level helps fluid drain and limits swelling; elevation also kept its place in later versions of the mnemonic such as PRICE and POLICE.
Q 24Earle Dickson invented the Band-Aid in 1920 for his wife, who kept cutting herself doing what?
Cooking
Cooking. Josephine Dickson kept nicking her fingers in the kitchen, so Earle stuck squares of gauze along a roll of tape, ready to use; sales were poor until free Band-Aids were handed to Boy Scout troops.
Q 25CPR mannequin Resusci Anne's face was modelled on the death mask of a woman said to have drowned in which river?
Seine
Seine. The face was cast from the death mask of L'Inconnue de la Seine, an unidentified young woman said to have been pulled from the river in the 1880s; her maker thought trainees would take more readily to a woman's face.
Q 26Trainees' practice phrase to Resusci Anne is said to have inspired the refrain of which Michael Jackson song?
Smooth Criminal
Smooth Criminal. Its refrain 'Annie, are you OK?' echoes the check-for-response line trainees say to Resusci Anne, the CPR mannequin introduced in Norway in 1960.
Q 27In the FAST test for spotting a stroke, F, A and S are face, arms and speech; what is T?
Time
Time: the cue to call an ambulance at once. The faster a stroke is treated the less of the brain is lost, and the clot-busting drug the test was written around has to be given within hours.
Q 28When stopping a nosebleed, which way should the head be tilted?
Forward
Forward. Leaning forward lets blood drain out rather than down the throat, where it causes nausea and airway trouble; pinch the soft part of the nose, not the bony bridge, without letting go to check.
Q 29A knocked-out adult tooth that cannot be put back in is best carried to the dentist in what?
Milk
Milk. Its chemistry is close enough to the body's own fluids to keep the cells on the root alive, whereas plain water harms them and a dry tooth soon dies; failing milk, tuck the tooth inside the cheek.
Q 30'Paradoxical undressing', in which a victim strips off their clothing, is a symptom of severe what?
Hypothermia
Hypothermia. One theory is that the exhausted muscles clamping the skin's blood vessels suddenly relax, so warm blood floods outward and victims feel they are burning; some also crawl into small enclosed spaces, 'terminal burrowing'.