History

Queen's First Aid was founded by student Ronald Goldstein in 1986. The unit's initial purpose was to provide prompt and effective first aid treatment to the Queen's community during organized activities on campus. These included intramural sports, frosh week events, concerts, semi-formals, formals, football games, Alumni Weekend events, etc. Queen's First Aid is also known as St. John Ambulance Adult Patient Care Division 970, and is designated as a Campus Response Team. This association with St. John Ambulance has provided a valuable resource for standards of training, increased qualifications, guest speakers, evaluators and administrative support.

In October of 1998 the director, Jeff Coull, made a formal proposal for the adoption of an on-call system to the QFA unit. It was approved by the unit and university administration, and was implemented in a four-week trial period in February of 1999. The on-call service was resumed as a full-time service in September 1999. 

Queen's First Aid is also a member of ACERT, the Association of Campus Emergency Response Teams. Formed in 1995 at the first National Conference for Campus Emergency Responders (NCCER), ACERT serves to represent campus response teams. NCCER is hosted by one of ACERT’s member teams each year; this conference allows for response teams to train and compete together, as well as providing a forum to discuss methods of training, communication, volunteer leadership, etc.

In the fall semester of 2002, the unit successfully conducted a four-week trial of 24 hours a day, seven days a week on- call service. At its conclusion, the unit decided to immediately implement 24/7 service during the regular school year.