Martin C.....as stated I served for 20years and along with the rest of the crews provided first aid on a daily basis. Your premise is in correct...the overriding factor in law was the first responder "has the best intentions" not my quote. This is from our training notes regarding litigation. There has all ready been a case in law which has set the precident, to which other case are compared.  It nowhere does it state " to the limit of your training" if that was the case no first aid could ever be given.  Now if you have a dirrective from say a union that says they will not support you if you act as a first responder ....that of course is advice that you must consider. Some one mentioned Teaching unions......If a child of mine was not provided with the duty of care if they were injured, because the staff felt they had insufficient training, I'd be the first in the line to file a writ. 

I agree with you that you need to act confidently and at least appearto know what your doing. There have been several cases where people have died as they wouldn't allow the first responder to touch them...for what ever reason. At best the training provided will be sufficient to cover the normal types of accidents, but in many case that I dealt with, our training only covered aspects of the injuries sustained by the victim.  I could give you details but it would not be pleasent reading.

As an aside and a warning ....have you lot checked your smoke detectors ?  a smoke detector with out a battery is not a smoke detector !

Of all the people I dragged from house fires....those that were unconcious remained  dead even with resucitation and defib. Over twenty years I personnally rescued in the order of 45 people  of which 12 were dead or DOA. So don't become a statistic !