With the steady advancement of public emergency response undertakings, unexpected injuries and illnesses occurring in various public settings, welfare events and community daily environments have been on the rise year by year, which generates growing social demands for professional pre-hospital emergency care services. First-aid nursing teaching in higher vocational colleges undertakes the core task of fostering emergency rescue competencies among nursing students, and its teaching effectiveness bears on the overall quality of public emergency service teams. Conventional first-aid nursing teaching relies on campus textbooks and simulation training, mostly focusing on in-hospital clinical treatment. Its training scenarios remain idealized and fixed, creating a clear gap with real-world volunteer rescue contexts such as outdoor sites, communities and large-scale events. Though students can proficiently follow standardized operating procedures, they frequently show inadequate on-site adaptability and narrow thinking for field management when confronted with complicated surroundings, public disturbances and variable injury conditions. Promoting teaching-model reform under the guidance of volunteer service can reorganize talent-training logic, optimize classroom implementation forms and practical-training systems. It aligns teaching activities with real-life social welfare rescue situations, enhances students’ comprehensive on-site rescue capabilities, and cultivates higher-vocational nursing talents who can satisfy job requirements within public emergency services.