Among all individuals, children are more prone to risks due to their curiosity, increased level of activity and lack of defence, self-protection, and awareness (Galal, 1999). Each year, every one of ten children is known to consult health care services as a result of accidents (Romer & Manciaux, 1991) and accidents constitute the leading causes of child death especially for school-age children (5-14 years) (Erkan & Goz, 2006).

Appropriately trained bystander response is known to be critical in cases of emergency (Anderson & Gaetz, 2008). Since there does not exist a health unit in a majority of schools, teacher intervention becomes inevitable in providing life supporting first aid to school-age children (Sahin, 2011). Research has consistently shown that trained individuals are more competent than untrained individuals (Abbas, Bukhari & Ahmad, 2011; Anderson & Gaetz, 2008; Bollig, Wahl & Svendsend, 2009) and offering first aid training to laypersons and children was found to be significantly efficient in producing sound first aid practices (Berkebile, Benson, Ersoz, Barnhill & Safar, 1975; Bircher & Safar, 1983; Fleischhackl et al., 2009). Currently in Turkey, first-aid education has a place in high school curriculum, and is also offered through courses constructed by Ministry of Health, public training centres, and driving schools (Sahin, 2011). On the other hand, an easy and manageable shortcut for reaching a considerable level of knowledge and awareness appears to embed this initiative into teacher education programs. This would ensure that all prospective teachers are informed by structured, organized, and informative training, which, in the future, would govern their students and others in need.

At another end, measuring self-efficacy beliefs yields information about how capable persons believe themselves to produce certain behaviours (Bandura, 1997) such as lending first aid assistance in emergency cases. Self-efficacy beliefs are particularly significant since “most courses of action are initially shaped in thought” (Bandura, 1993, p. 118) and they are predictive of the nature of action taken, the amount of effort put in given tasks, the outcomes produced by these efforts, and resilience to difficulties (Bandura, 2000). If persons believe they do not have the capability to produce certain ends, they even do not attempt at trying to make them happen (Bandura, 1997). Low self-efficacy is expected to hinder the application of first aid knowledge even if the person is knowledgeable and skilful (Maibach, Scheiber, & Carroll, 1996).

It can be inferred from the evidenced literature that the prospective teachers’ thoughts about their capabilities carry important hints for their future course of action in given emergency settings and determine their success in their efforts to save lives. Empirically speaking, there is only one study that investigated first aid self-efficacy, however, it concentrated on parental self-efficacy for first aid (Wei et al., 2013). The research related to teachers rather heavily concentrated on their first aid knowledge levels (Li, Jiang, Xingming Jin, Qiu & Shen, 2012; Nayir et al., 2011; Slabe & Fink, 2013; Wiśniewski & Majewski, 2007). Except for Slabe and Fink (2013), these studies concluded that teachers lacked ample knowledge of first aid and indicated a need for sound educational foundation. It is clear that proper training can potentially contribute immediate medical response coming from the teachers (Kano, Siegel, & Bourque, 2005) and the study of first-aid self-efficacy is promising in identifying the beliefs and thus hints of performances of future teachers. 

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