First Aid Merit Badge
The largest merit badge here: fifteen requirements, a hundred and six parts, and almost no order between them. This is an honest grouped checklist rather than a dependency graph, plus the six parts that need equipment or another person.
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The plan behind this
This page is a checklist, and that is deliberate
Most plans on this site show you what depends on what. This one mostly cannot, because First Aid states almost no order between its requirements. You may learn frostbite before bee stings or after; the badge does not mind, and this page does not pretend otherwise.
What it does instead is group and count, because the real problem with this badge is its size: fifteen requirements and a hundred and six parts, more than twice a typical merit badge. Seen as one list it is shapeless. Seen in groups it is plannable:
| parts | |
|---|---|
| Handling and preparing for an emergency (1–2) | 13 |
| Wounds without bleeding (3) | 17 |
| Bleeding wounds (4) | 4 |
| Breathing emergencies (5) | 5 |
| Loss of consciousness (6) | 7 |
| Heart attack, CPR and AEDs (7) | 7 |
| Muscle and bone injuries (8) | 12 |
| Head and spine (9) | 4 |
| Moving a patient (10) | 5 |
| Heat and cold (11) | 6 |
| Mental health (12) | 4 |
| Miscellaneous (13) | 5 |
| Teaching a skill (14) and careers (15) | 5 |
The six parts that need more than a conversation
These are scattered through the requirements rather than gathered together, and they are the ones to arrange deliberately, ideally in one or two sessions rather than discovering them one at a time:
- 7(d), CPR on a training device your counselor approves
- 7(f), the proper use of an AED, on a trainer if one is available
- 7(g) (finding where the AEDs actually are in your community
- 10(c) and 10(d)) transporting a person, alone and with a partner
- 10(e) (improvising a stretcher, with helpers under your supervision
- 14) teaching a first aid skill using the EDGE method, to real people Requirement 14 is the one most often left to the end and it needs the most setting up: a plan agreed with your counselor, and then somebody to teach.
If you are here because of Emergency Preparedness
Requirement 9 of the Emergency Preparedness merit badge is "Earn the First Aid merit badge", this whole page. If that is why you are here, it is worth knowing now rather than three requirements in. There is a separate plan for Emergency Preparedness on this site.
What this page is not
Not a copy of the requirements, and not a first aid manual. Each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year. What to actually do for a casualty is taught by your counselor and set out in the merit badge pamphlet, never learn a treatment from a checklist.
Sources for this page
- First Aid Merit Badge Requirements, Merit Badge Hub, last modified 2025-12-01 · The requirements themselves, and the free official pamphlet linked from them.
- Guide to Advancement, 2025, Section 7.0.0.3 · The process every merit badge is earned through, which this page does not repeat.
- Guide to Advancement, 2025, Section 7.0.4.3 · Which version of a changed requirement applies to a Scout who has already started.
- Guide to Advancement, 2025, Section 4.0.0.1 · Why the requirements are not in the Guide to Advancement and are expected to change annually.
Last checked against its sources on .