Event medical response is the planned provision of on-site care at a gathering, sized to the risks of that specific event rather than to its ticket count. In Australia it sits under the organiser duty of care in work health and safety law, and is delivered alongside, not instead of, the state ambulance service. Its purpose is to reach a patient and begin treatment in the minutes before an ambulance can arrive.
Indicative planning figures drawn from resuscitation and crowd science. They are not regulatory limits.
A working reference for event organisers, venue managers, production staff and volunteer coordinators planning medical cover in Australia.
Event medical response is the on-site clinical capability an organiser puts in place so that illness and injury at a gathering are recognised, treated and escalated without delay. It spans everything from a single first aid post at a community market to a multi-team field operation with doctors, paramedics and a dedicated patient transport pathway. The discipline behind it is known as mass gathering medicine.
The defining feature of a mass gathering is that a large number of people are concentrated in a space where normal emergency access is restricted. An ambulance that would ordinarily reach a street address in minutes may need to negotiate fencing, pedestrian flow, car parks, mud, stage infrastructure and a security perimeter. On-site medical cover exists to close that gap. It is best understood as a time-to-intervention service rather than as a miniature hospital.
Australian research has shaped how this is modelled internationally. The widely used framework developed by Australian mass gathering researchers groups the variables that drive medical workload into three domains: biomedical factors such as the age and health profile of the crowd, environmental factors such as heat, humidity, terrain and venue type, and psychosocial factors such as crowd mood, music genre, alcohol availability and the behaviour the event encourages. Two events with identical attendance can generate very different patient loads once those three domains are compared.
Two measures recur throughout the literature and in provider quotes. Patient presentation rate, often shortened to PPR, is the number of people who present to the medical service per thousand attendees. Transport to hospital rate, or TTHR, is the proportion sent on to an emergency department. Both are used to size teams, stock and ambulance liaison. Published ranges vary enormously by event type, so they belong in planning as a tested estimate for your own event rather than as an industry constant.
There is no single national attendance threshold in Australia above which medical cover becomes compulsory. The obligation comes from work health and safety law, which treats an event organiser as a person conducting a business or undertaking and requires first aid that is adequate for the risks actually present. Some event categories carry additional, specific obligations on top of that general duty.
In practice three separate layers decide what you must provide, and they are often confused with one another.
Model work health and safety laws, adopted with variations across the states and territories, require a person conducting a business or undertaking to provide first aid equipment, facilities and trained first aiders appropriate to the hazards, the size of the operation and the location. The model Code of Practice on first aid in the workplace is the reference document most regulators point to. Volunteers are workers for these purposes, which catches a large share of community events.
Certain events sit under their own statutory regime. The clearest Australian example is New South Wales, where music festivals captured by the Music Festivals Act 2019 must prepare and comply with a health and medical plan, and higher risk festivals need that plan agreed with NSW Health before the event proceeds. Requirements of this kind change, so confirm the current position with the relevant department rather than relying on a summary.
The practical trigger is often contractual rather than statutory. Local council permits, land owner agreements, venue hire conditions, liquor licensing and public liability insurers commonly specify medical cover, first aid post provision, ambulance access or a safety management plan. These conditions frequently exceed the statutory minimum, and failing them can void cover.
Event medical teams are built from tiers of clinical capability, each with a different scope of practice. A plan that stacks many people at the lowest tier is not equivalent to one that places a smaller number of higher tier clinicians where they are needed. The right mix is the one that matches the clinical problems your risk assessment predicts.
| Tier | Typical scope | Suited to | Key limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| First aider | DRSABCD, bleeding control, splinting, basic airway, defibrillation with an automated device, patient comfort and observation | Low risk community events, seated audiences, markets, school and sporting fixtures | No medication administration beyond very limited items, no advanced airway or cannulation |
| Advanced first aid or emergency responder | Oxygen therapy, suction, supraglottic airway in some scopes, extended trauma management, structured patient handover | Mid-size festivals, agricultural shows, endurance events | Scope varies widely between providers and is set by the employer, not by a single national standard |
| Registered paramedic | Comprehensive emergency assessment, analgesia, a defined drug formulary, cardiac monitoring, advanced airway management | Large crowds, alcohol licensed events, motorsport, high consequence sites | Registration and scope must be verified; an event paramedic is not automatically an ambulance resource |
| Intensive care paramedic | Critical care interventions, extended pharmacology, complex resuscitation, retrieval support | Major festivals, events with credible mass casualty exposure, remote sites | Scarce and costly; usually justified by distance from definitive care rather than by crowd size alone |
| Event doctor | Diagnosis, prescribing, treat and discharge decisions on site, clinical governance of the team | Very large or high acuity events, and events seeking to reduce hospital transfers | Needs defined governance, record keeping and medication custody arrangements |
| Welfare and peer support | Non-clinical de-escalation, hydration, shade, psychological first aid, early identification of deteriorating patrons | Music festivals and night-time events | Not a substitute for clinical staff; must have clear escalation criteria |
Scopes of practice differ by jurisdiction, employer and individual qualification. Confirm what each roster member is actually authorised to do before the event, in writing.
An event medical plan is the document that translates your risk assessment into people, equipment, locations and decisions. A plan is workable when a clinician who has never attended your event can read it on arrival and know where to stand, who to call, and what triggers an escalation. Ten components cover almost every format.
In New South Wales, music festivals subject to the Music Festivals Act 2019 work to a prescribed health and medical plan format, and NSW Health publishes a template. Where a prescribed format exists, use it rather than a generic structure.
Most event medical outcomes are decided in the first ten minutes after a collapse or injury, long before an ambulance arrives. The variables that matter are how quickly the patient is found, how quickly a defibrillator reaches them, and how clearly the first person on scene communicates. Rehearsing this sequence is more valuable than adding equipment.
The overwhelming majority of event presentations are minor: blisters, cuts, headaches, mild dehydration and small limb injuries. The rare critical presentations are what the plan must be designed around, because they are the ones where minutes decide the outcome. The table below pairs common presentations with the early signs that staff should be briefed to recognise.
| Presentation | Early signs to brief staff on | Immediate priority |
|---|---|---|
| Cardiac arrest | Sudden collapse, unresponsive, not breathing normally, occasional gasping that is often mistaken for breathing | Compressions immediately, defibrillator to scene, triple zero in parallel |
| Heat exhaustion | Heavy sweating, weakness, nausea, headache, clammy skin, normal or mildly raised temperature, mental state intact | Move to shade, cool actively, rehydrate, observe for progression |
| Heat stroke | Confusion, agitation, slurred speech, collapse, very hot skin, altered mental state in a hot environment | Medical emergency. Cool first, transport second. Start rapid cooling on scene |
| Anaphylaxis | Hives with breathing difficulty, swelling of face or throat, wheeze, sudden collapse after food, sting or drug exposure | Adrenaline autoinjector without delay, lay flat, triple zero, never let the patient stand or walk |
| Seizure | Sudden collapse with convulsion, loss of awareness, post-event confusion | Protect from injury, time the seizure, nothing in the mouth, recovery position afterwards |
| Drug or alcohol toxicity | Agitation, very high body temperature, confusion, abnormal behaviour, reduced consciousness, hyperventilation | Clinical assessment, active cooling where hot, continuous observation, early escalation |
| Crush and compression injury | Patron unable to move within a tight crowd, distress with no space, difficulty breathing while upright | Relieve density and extract, airway and breathing first, treat as time critical |
| Falls and limb trauma | Deformity, inability to bear weight, pain out of proportion, bleeding that does not slow with pressure | Control bleeding, immobilise, analgesia within scope, assess for head and spinal involvement |
| Mental health crisis | Acute distress, panic, disorientation, overwhelming sensory load, risk to self | Quiet low stimulus space, psychological first aid, clinical and welfare pathway, do not isolate |
| Minor presentations | Blisters, abrasions, sunburn, insect bites, headaches, mild dehydration | Treat and release efficiently; volume here protects capacity for the serious cases |
This table is a briefing aid for non-clinical event staff, not a clinical protocol. In any emergency in Australia, call triple zero.
Environmental conditions are the most predictable driver of event medical workload, and the easiest to write decision rules around in advance. The value of a trigger is that it removes judgement from a tired production team at four in the afternoon. Each threshold should be agreed before the event, with a named person authorised to act on it.
| Factor | What it does to workload | Typical planned responses |
|---|---|---|
| Air temperature | Drives dehydration, heat exhaustion and heat stroke; raises presentation rates sharply on exposed sites | Staged triggers: extra free water points, misting, shade expansion, roving hydration teams, set break schedules, pause criteria |
| Humidity | Reduces the effectiveness of sweating, so heat illness appears at lower temperatures than people expect | Use a combined heat measure rather than raw temperature; brief staff that a humid 30 degrees can outperform a dry 35 |
| Direct sun and shade cover | Radiant load on a treeless site is often the difference between a quiet and a busy medical post | Shade structures at queues, viewing areas and medical posts; schedule high exertion activity outside peak sun |
| Wind | Threatens temporary structures, signage, marquees, lighting towers and stage elements | Structural wind ratings documented, monitoring during the event, pre-agreed strike and evacuation thresholds |
| Storms and lightning | Creates a sudden evacuation requirement with a very short lead time | Weather watch role, defined safe assembly areas, hold and release procedure, crowd messaging that is written in advance |
| Smoke and air quality | Aggravates asthma and cardiac conditions; a recurring Australian summer factor | Air quality monitoring, reliever medication availability within scope, criteria for curtailment |
| Ground conditions | Mud, uneven terrain and cabling generate falls and slow every stretcher movement | Matting on high traffic routes, trip hazard sweeps, all terrain patient transport capability |
| Crowd density | The dominant driver of crush risk and the main obstacle to reaching a patient | Density monitoring, flow management, entry rate control, pre-planned response corridors |
| Cold and wet | Underestimated in Australia; hypothermia risk at night-time, alpine and camping events | Heated or sheltered welfare space, dry clothing stock, overnight welfare patrols |
Specific numeric thresholds vary by state guidance, venue, event type and audience, and they are revised. Set yours in consultation with your medical provider and the relevant authority, and record the reasoning.
Most crowd crush deaths are caused by compressive asphyxia, not by people being trampled underfoot. Once density rises past roughly six people per square metre, individuals lose the ability to control their own movement, the chest cannot expand against the surrounding pressure, and breathing fails while the person is still standing. Crowd safety is therefore an engineering and flow problem, not a crowd control problem.
Crowd science describes a progression rather than a single event. As density increases, free movement is lost first, then the crowd begins to behave as a fluid, with shockwaves travelling through it when people at one edge push or stumble. A gap opens, people fall into it, and a progressive collapse propagates. By the time this is visible from a stage or a control room, intervention options are already limited.
Density figures quoted in crowd science are planning guidance, not statutory limits. Treat them as the point at which your controls must already be working.
Harm minimisation is the set of measures that reduce the damage caused by alcohol and other drug use among people who are going to use them regardless. At Australian festivals it is built from free drinking water, shaded chill out space, roving welfare teams, peer support and clear signage, combined with messaging that encourages patrons to seek help early. NSW Health guidance places particular weight on visible signage and on removing the fear that asking for help will get someone removed or charged.
Welfare and medical capacity are communicating vessels. A well-run welfare operation absorbs a large number of presentations that would otherwise reach the medical post, which protects clinical capacity for genuine emergencies. The reverse is also true: a site with no shade, no water and no visible welfare presence will generate medical demand that no roster can comfortably absorb.
The legal status of specific interventions, including drug checking services, differs between states and has changed repeatedly. Confirm the current position in your jurisdiction before building it into a plan.
Infectious illness affects events in two distinct ways: it reduces the crew who are meant to run the event, and it spreads among a dense audience. Rapid antigen testing is a screening tool used mostly on crew, contractors and performers rather than on patrons, and a negative result reduces probability rather than excluding infection. Kits are also temperature sensitive, which matters on an Australian summer site.
A rapid antigen test detects viral proteins when they are present in sufficient quantity. Early in an infection, or when the sample is poorly collected, that quantity may be below the threshold the test can see. This makes a single negative result a snapshot rather than a clearance. Used sensibly, testing supports decisions about whether a symptomatic crew member works a shift; used carelessly, it creates false confidence.
| Factor | Nasal sample | Saliva sample |
|---|---|---|
| Collection | Swab inserted into the nostril and rotated for the stated time | Saliva collected into a funnel or by swabbing the mouth |
| Tolerability | Uncomfortable for many people, often leading to shallow and inadequate sampling | Generally better tolerated, which can improve compliance on repeat testing |
| Common user error | Not inserting far enough, or not rotating for long enough | Eating, drinking or smoking too close to collection, or providing insufficient volume |
| Practicality on site | Fast and self-contained; needs a private space and waste handling | Needs a short abstinence window beforehand, which is harder to manage mid-shift |
| Interpretation | Both are screening tests. Follow the instructions supplied with the specific product, and treat a negative result in a symptomatic person with caution. | |
Every kit specifies a storage temperature range on the packaging. Production environments routinely breach it: kits left in a vehicle, a shipping container, an unshaded production office or a sun exposed store can exceed that range by a wide margin within an hour. Heat degrades the reagent and the result can no longer be relied upon. Store kits in a shaded, climate controlled location, let a cold kit return to room temperature before use, and discard anything that has been heat exposed or physically damaged.
The expiry date printed on a rapid test box is frequently superseded. As longer stability data becomes available, suppliers and regulators extend shelf life for specific batches, so two boxes with the same printed date can have different true expiry. The correct check is the batch or lot number against the current supplier and regulator listing, not the printed date in isolation. Build that check into your pre-event equipment audit rather than discovering it at the gate.
Product specific performance, approved uses and current batch expiry listings change. Check the manufacturer instructions and the regulator listing for the exact product you hold.
Beliefs that repeatedly shape event plans in the wrong direction.
An event organiser in Australia is a person conducting a business or undertaking under work health and safety law, with duties towards workers, volunteers and members of the public affected by the event. The obligation is to eliminate risk so far as is reasonably practicable, and to minimise what cannot be eliminated. Documentation is how that reasoning is demonstrated afterwards.
The test is not whether an incident occurred, but whether the organiser identified foreseeable risks and put proportionate controls in place. Regulators and insurers look for evidence of a process: a risk assessment that names the specific hazards of this event, a plan that responds to them, briefings that reached the people who needed them, and a record of decisions taken on the day.
Patient records collected at an event are personal health information. They need secure storage, controlled access, a defined retention period and a lawful basis for any disclosure. Handing a patient record to a production manager or a sponsor because they asked is not acceptable. Agree the custody arrangement with your medical provider in writing before the event, including who holds the records afterwards.
This section describes the general framework. Specific obligations, thresholds and notification duties differ by state and territory and are revised. Confirm the current requirements with your regulator or a qualified adviser.
Guidance in this field changes, and the authoritative version always sits with the issuing body. These are the primary places to confirm current requirements before finalising a plan. Start with your own state, because work health and safety law is applied jurisdiction by jurisdiction.
Model work health and safety laws and the model Code of Practice on first aid in the workplace, which state regulators adopt with variations.
SafeWork NSW, WorkSafe Victoria, Workplace Health and Safety Queensland and their counterparts publish the version of the code in force where your event is held.
NSW Health publishes guidelines for music festival event organisers covering harm reduction and health and medical plans. Other jurisdictions publish their own event health guidance.
Event notification processes, access requirements and arrangements for contracted on-site resources.
The basic and advanced life support guidelines that underpin DRSABCD and defibrillator use in Australia.
Permits, licence conditions, site specific emergency plans and the medical cover clauses in your hire agreement.
Event medical providers differ enormously in clinical scope, governance and experience, and quotes are rarely comparable on price alone. The questions below separate a provider who will carry clinical risk properly from one who is supplying staff at a day rate. Ask them in writing and keep the answers with your plan.
Pricing structures and market rates vary by state, season and event scale, and they move. Compare proposals on scope, roster and governance first, then on cost.
Roles that have to make these decisions, usually without a clinical background.
Sizing cover, commissioning a provider and signing off a plan they are accountable for.
Access routes, capacity, emergency procedures and conditions imposed on hirers.
Briefing non-clinical teams on what to look for and how to raise an alarm.
Translating a general duty of care into documented, defensible event controls.
Everything above in sequence: how to move from a blank page to a medical plan that holds up on the day, survives scrutiny afterwards, and matches the event you are actually running rather than the one in the template.
The most common planning failure is starting from a number of staff. It produces a plan that cannot explain itself, and it breaks the moment conditions change. The sequence that works runs the other way: describe the event precisely, derive the risks, estimate the workload, then build the team that the workload requires.
Describe the event in the terms that actually drive medical demand. Attendance and dates matter less than whether the crowd is seated or mobile, whether the site is bounded or open, how far it is from a sealed road, how much shade exists, whether alcohol is served, whether patrons camp overnight, what the audience age profile looks like, and what the event culture encourages. A seated 20,000 capacity arena concert and a 5,000 person open-air dance event in February are not comparable planning problems, and the smaller one is frequently the harder one.
Generic risk registers list hazards such as injury and illness, and are useless. A usable assessment names the specific scenario, the population affected, the existing controls and what remains. Instead of trips and falls, write: patrons crossing uneven ground between the camping area and the main arena in darkness, with cabling crossing the route at two points, no lighting on the eastern path, and an estimated 3,000 movements after midnight.
The three domain framework from Australian mass gathering research is a practical prompt list. Work through biomedical factors, environmental factors and psychosocial factors in turn and write down what each contributes for your event. The output is not a score. It is a list of concrete scenarios that your plan must answer.
Patient presentation rate is the planning currency. The estimate should be built from comparable events, not from a rule of thumb, and it should be documented with the comparison you used. Weather is the variable that most often invalidates a prior year estimate, so build at least two cases: expected conditions and a hot or wet alternative, with the staffing and stock implications of each.
Transport to hospital rate matters separately, because it governs your relationship with the ambulance service and the local emergency department. A plan that quietly assumes it can transport a dozen people on a Saturday night without any consultation is not a plan. Where an event is large enough to affect the local health system, that conversation happens early, not during the event.
Capability is useless if it cannot reach the patient. Map the time to reach every zone, including backstage, campgrounds, car parks, queues outside the gate and the furthest point of the site, in the conditions that will exist when the crowd is at peak. Then place roving teams, defibrillators and transport capability to compress the worst of those times.
A site that is impassable at 9pm needs roving capability inside the dense areas, not a larger tent at the perimeter. Consider how a stretcher actually moves through the crowd you are expecting, and whether the response corridor shown on the plan will still be open when 8,000 people are watching the headline act.
The point of pre-agreed triggers is to remove judgement from exhausted people under pressure. Decide in advance what temperature or heat measure prompts additional water points and shade, what wind speed strikes the marquees, what lightning distance holds the show, what density reading pauses entry, and who is authorised to act in each case. Put names against those authorities, and make sure those people know they hold them.
The same applies to escalation. Define what triggers a call for additional resources, who declares a major incident, and in what structured format the message is passed. Rehearse the message. The moment to discover that nobody knows the site grid reference system is not while a patient is in cardiac arrest.
A dedicated medical radio channel, clear call signs, and a single rehearsed process for anyone on site to raise an alarm will do more for outcomes than most equipment purchases. Brief bar staff, security, cleaners and volunteers on exactly what to say and to whom, because they are the people who will see most incidents first.
Location naming deserves particular attention. Zones should be named consistently across production, security, medical and the ambulance service, and those names should appear on the site map, on signage and on the radio. The single most common cause of delay in event medical response is a responder arriving in the wrong place.
Most events never need field triage. The ones that do, need it immediately and without discussion. The plan should state which triage system is in use, who assigns categories, where a casualty collection point would be established, and how the structured major incident message is sent. Note clearly that field triage categories are not the Australasian Triage Scale used in emergency departments; conflating the two creates confusion at handover.
Across most of the country, heat is the most reliable driver of medical workload and the most preventable. Hydration, shade and schedule are preventive controls, and they belong in the production plan rather than in the medical plan alone. Clinically, the distinction that matters is between heat exhaustion, where mental state is intact, and heat stroke, where it is not. Heat stroke is a time critical emergency and the principle is to cool first and transport second, because the duration of the raised core temperature is what causes the damage.
Humidity is the factor most often missed. Sweating is the main cooling mechanism available to the body, and high humidity blunts it, so heat illness can appear at temperatures that feel manageable. Use a combined measure rather than raw air temperature when setting your triggers, and brief staff on why a humid day is not the mild day it appears to be.
Welfare and harm minimisation reduce clinical demand and improve detection. Water, shade, quiet space, roving welfare teams and clear signage shorten the time between someone deteriorating and someone noticing. Messaging that makes patrons confident they can ask for help without being ejected or charged directly affects how late people present, and late presentations are the dangerous ones. NSW Health guidance for music festival organisers emphasises exactly this combination of visible services and early help seeking.
A hot debrief on the day captures what people remember while they still remember it. A formal review afterwards should look at presentation numbers against the estimate, response times against the targets, any incident that required escalation, equipment and stock performance, and whether the triggers you set were the right ones. Feed the findings into next year as specific changes, with owners and deadlines. A plan that is copied forward unchanged for three years is a plan nobody has tested.
This guide deliberately avoids quoting staffing ratios, permit thresholds, regulatory limits, price benchmarks and current guideline versions. Those figures differ by state, venue and event type, they are revised frequently, and a number repeated out of context is how bad plans get justified. Where a figure is decision critical, take it from the issuing authority for your jurisdiction, record the date you checked, and review it before the next event.
There is no single national rule that sets a headcount of medics per event. Event organisers are persons conducting a business or undertaking under work health and safety law, so the duty is to assess the risks of your specific event and provide first aid that is adequate for them.
Some events carry extra obligations. In New South Wales, music festivals captured by the Music Festivals Act 2019 must prepare and comply with a health and medical plan, and higher risk festivals need that plan agreed with NSW Health. Venue conditions, council permits and insurers frequently impose further requirements. Always confirm the current position with your state regulator and health department.
Staffing is an output of a risk assessment, not an input to it. The number and skill mix follow from attendance, event type, duration, weather exposure, alcohol and drug availability, crowd mobility, audience age profile and the distance to the nearest emergency department.
Two events with identical attendance can justify very different teams. Treat any ratio you see quoted as a starting hypothesis to be tested against your own patient presentation estimate, and ask any provider to explain how their proposal was derived.
DRSABCD is the basic life support action plan taught in Australia: Danger, Response, Send for help, Airway, Breathing, CPR, Defibrillation. It is the sequence a first aider follows on reaching a collapsed patron.
At events the first three steps carry disproportionate weight. Scene danger from crowd pressure, vehicles or stage equipment changes the approach, and a fast, accurate call for help determines whether the rest of the chain works at all.
Survival from cardiac arrest falls sharply with every minute that passes without defibrillation, commonly described as roughly ten per cent per minute. Event plans therefore work backwards from a target of around three minutes from collapse to shock, anywhere on site.
That target should drive how many devices you deploy, where they sit, and how roving teams are positioned. It is a far better design input than the size of the medical tent.
Risk rises steeply once a standing crowd passes roughly four to five people per square metre, and densities above about six per square metre are treated as dangerous because individuals can no longer control their own movement.
These are indicative planning figures from crowd science rather than legal limits. The practical control is to manage entry rate, flow and layout so that such densities never form in the first place.
Most crowd crush deaths are caused by compressive asphyxia rather than by people being trampled underfoot. At high density the chest cannot expand against the surrounding pressure, so breathing fails while the person is still upright and wedged in place.
This is why crowd safety is engineered through density, flow and layout rather than managed reactively once a crush has already formed. By the time a crush is visible from a stage, the available options are limited.
The accepted principle in exertional heat stroke is cool first, transport second. Time spent at a dangerously high core temperature drives the injury, so rapid cooling is started on scene rather than deferred until the patient reaches hospital.
Heat stroke is distinguished from heat exhaustion by altered mental state, including confusion, agitation or collapse, and it is a medical emergency. In Australia, call triple zero.
Harm minimisation is the set of measures that reduce the damage caused by alcohol and other drug use among people who are going to use them regardless. At festivals it typically includes free drinking water, shaded chill out spaces, roving welfare teams, peer support and clear signage to medical and welfare services.
Messaging matters as much as infrastructure. NSW Health guidance emphasises encouraging patrons to seek help early, because the presentations that become dangerous are usually the late ones. The legal status of specific interventions differs between states and has changed repeatedly, so confirm the current position locally.
Rapid antigen tests contain biological reagents with a specified storage range. Leaving kits in a hot vehicle, a shipping container or an unshaded production office can exceed that range quickly, degrade the reagent and make results unreliable.
Printed expiry dates are also frequently extended batch by batch as longer stability data becomes available, so the correct check is the batch or lot number against the current supplier and regulator listing rather than the printed date alone. Discard any kit that has been heat exposed or physically damaged.
A workable plan covers the event profile and risk assessment, expected patient presentations, team structure and qualifications, equipment and medication holdings, the location and layout of medical posts, ambulance access and egress routes, communications and call signs, escalation thresholds and major incident authority, patient records and privacy handling, weather triggers and stop criteria, and the debrief and reporting process.
The test of a plan is whether a clinician who has never attended your event can read it on arrival and know where to stand, who to call and what triggers an escalation. Where a prescribed format applies, such as the health and medical plan required for certain New South Wales music festivals, use that format rather than a generic structure.
Work through the sections above in order, confirm the current requirements with your state regulator and health department, and keep a dated record of every figure you rely on. Where numbers change, our dated articles cover them in detail.
Read the complete guide Common questionsDated coverage of the figures and rules that change: staffing guidance, state requirements, equipment and seasonal risk.
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