Resuscitation Council (UK)

About us

About Us

Our mission statement

The Resuscitation Council (UK) exists to promote high-quality, scientific, resuscitation guidelines that are applicable to everybody, and to contribute to saving life through education, training, research and collaboration.

We achieve this by:

  • Developing guidelines, standards and educational materials for resuscitation
  • Influencing resuscitation policy and practice by maintaining standards
  • Supporting research into resuscitation
  • Building the resuscitation community to foster good working relations between all involved in resuscitation
  • Capturing and putting evidence into practice.

Our Strategic Plan

Our Strategic Plan, Resus 2020, sets the overall direction for our organisation up to April 2020.

Who we are

We are a professional body set up by a group of medical professionals and established in 1983 by Charitable Trust Deed. Our primary objective is promoting high-quality practice in all aspects of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to improve survival rates.

We develop and publish evidence-based resuscitation guidelines to set out the interventions and practices that are most likely to achieve successful resuscitation from cardiac arrest. These guidelines  are intended for all healthcare professionals, first-aid organisations and lay people. 

The scientific evidence supporting these guidelines is reviewed every five years and their rigorous development process has received NICE Accreditation.

We work closely and in collaboration with a wide range of other professional organisations and charities. For example, we have developed Quality Standards for CPR Practice and Training documents that have been contributed to and endorsed by a variety of professional bodies including; Royal College of Physicians of London, Royal College of Anaesthetists, Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, Royal College of General Practitioners and Royal College of Nursing. The Quality Standards include guidance on equipment, training and delivery of resuscitation services in settings including primary care, primary dental care, acute (hospital) care, and mental health inpatient care.

We are governed by a Board of Trustees. This consists of the Officers of the RC (UK); the President, Honorary Treasurer and Honorary Secretary all of whom are Trustees and elected by the full members of the RC (UK). In addition, we can have up to three further Trustees, appointed by the elected Trustees. The Board members need to have the skills and knowledge and are responsible for ensuring that the RC (UK) is managed effectively and with good governance.

The RC (UK) is advised by the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee consists of 25 people, 12 of whom are elected from and by full members of the RC (UK). Our Executive Committee members, subcommittee members and instructors are doctors, nurses, resuscitation officers, paramedics, and other healthcare professionals. The role of the Executive Committee is to advise the Board of Trustees based on their wide experience and expertise in a wide range of clinical settings including primary care, the ambulance service, emergency and acute hospital medicine, intensive care medicine, anaesthesia, cardiology, and end-of-life care.

All give their time on a voluntary basis.

The RC (UK) staff is led by our Chief Executive Officer who, along with the senior management team, manages the organisation’s affairs on behalf of the Trustees.

We have developed training courses for healthcare professionals in advanced life support for adults, children and the newborn. These courses are delivered in accredited centres throughout the UK and over 135, 000 healthcare professionals attend these courses each year through a network of 12,600 instructors.  

Through projects such as the award-winning Lifesaver interactive film and collaborative work with other organisations, we want to engage with the public. We believe that by promoting and increasing public awareness of cardiac arrest and the knowledge of how to respond in such an emergency survival rates will improve.

We encourage research into methods of resuscitation and each year we set a research budget and invite applications.  

Transparency is important to us at Resuscitation Council (UK), especially when it comes to where our money comes from and how we’re spending it.

We are largely funded through our courses. Each year, these courses see over 135,000 healthcare professions learn high-quality, evidence-based, resuscitation training.

We receive a registration fee and also a fee for the course manual every time a course is booked. These manuals are heavily discounted for the course attendees, but we also sell full-price manuals for those not attending a course. 

For our ILS and PILS courses, we receive a yearly subscription fee from the centre running the courses, plus the cost of the manuals for those attending the courses.

A small portion of our funding comes from subscriptions to our membership, which we receive annually. We also receive royalties for the overseas use of our ALS courses, and a small amount of our income comes from running our annual Scientific Symposium. 

Occasionally, we receive one-off donations, such as legacy benefits.

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