Emergency Action Plans and Defibrillators for Clubs: The Three-Minute Rule

Fewer than one in ten people who have a cardiac arrest outside hospital in the UK survive, according to the British Heart Foundation, and every minute without CPR and defibrillation cuts the odds by up to 10%. A club cannot change how far away the ambulance is. It can decide, before the session starts, who calls, who pushes and who runs for the defibrillator.

What is an emergency action plan, and does a small club need one?

An emergency action plan is a single page that says what happens in the first ten minutes after someone collapses, is badly hurt or stops breathing. It names people, not job titles. It lists the venue address with postcode, the gate an ambulance should use and where the nearest defibrillator lives.

Yes, a small club needs one. Probably more than a big one, because a small club has no physio on the bench and no steward with a radio.

Most clubs already have pieces of it scattered around. The risk assessment mentions first aid. The welfare officer knows there is a defibrillator "somewhere in the leisure centre". The coach has parents' numbers on a personal phone. None of that helps at 7.40pm on a dark Tuesday when a 64-year-old in the walking football group goes down on the far pitch and three people stand looking at each other.

Why do the minutes matter more than the machine?

NHS England's mean response target for the most serious 999 calls, Category 1, is seven minutes, and many areas miss it. In a cardiac arrest the heart is usually in a chaotic rhythm that only a shock can reset. CPR keeps some blood moving to the brain until that shock arrives. So the people already at your session decide most of the outcome, before any paramedic gets there.

The British Heart Foundation's defibrillator guidance is blunt about this: anyone can use a public access defibrillator, the machine gives spoken instructions and it will not shock someone who does not need it. The barrier is rarely skill. It is the four minutes lost while someone works out where the cabinet is and what the code might be.

Where should the defibrillator be, and who looks after it?

Measure, do not guess. Stand at the furthest point of your session, start a stopwatch and walk briskly to the AED, open the cabinet and walk back. If the round trip is over three minutes, the defibrillator is in the wrong place for your club, even if it is in exactly the right place for the building.

Then do three things. Register it on The Circuit, the national defibrillator network, so 999 call handlers can see it and send a caller to it. Name one guardian who checks the status light and pad expiry date every month and records the check. Write the cabinet code, or the fact that 999 will give it, on the plan itself.

What goes on the one-page plan?

1. Venue details. Full address, postcode, what3words for a pitch away from the road, and which gate the ambulance uses.
2. The nearest AED. Where it is, how long it takes to fetch, how the cabinet opens.
3. Four roles for every session. Caller, CPR, runner, gate. Named on the session itself, not once a season.
4. The rest of the group. Who moves the other players or children away and stays with them.
5. Information for the crew. Where emergency contacts and medical notes are kept, so whoever travels with the patient can pass them on.
6. Afterwards. Who writes up the incident the same day, who tells the family, who reports the AED use so pads are replaced, and who checks on the volunteers.

The caller should ring 999 on speaker and stay by the patient. Call handlers give CPR instructions over the phone, and the person doing compressions needs to hear them.

Should every coach be trained, or just a few first aiders?

We take a clear side here: train everyone briefly before you train anyone deeply. A club with one person holding a three-day First Aid at Work certificate is in trouble on the night that person is on holiday. A club where every coach has done the free 15-minute RevivR course from the BHF, and has pressed on a manikin once at a club night, has a CPR provider at every session. Deeper first aid training still has a place for injuries. Cardiac arrest rewards numbers and speed, not qualifications.

The drill matters more than either. Coaches we speak to often say something like: "We all knew the plan. Then we timed it and the defib took five minutes to reach the far court."

What does this look like at a real club?

Take Ashworth Park Tennis Club, a fictional but typical club in Bolton with 214 members, six courts and junior coaching four evenings a week. Its AED sat in the clubhouse kitchen. The first timed drill, from court 6, took 4 minutes 12 seconds, because the runner tried the locked kitchen door first.

The committee moved the AED to an outdoor cabinet between courts 3 and 4, registered it on The Circuit and gave the cabinet code to every coach. Each coaching session now shows its four named roles alongside the register, set by the head coach when the session is created. The second drill took 1 minute 38 seconds. The club repeats it every April and October, when the clocks change and evening sessions move from daylight to floodlights.

How does Bitir help?

In Bitir the emergency action plan is pinned in the coaches' channel, so it is on every coach's phone rather than in a folder in the clubhouse. Roles mark who the trained first aiders are, and attendance shows who is actually on site tonight, which is the only list that matters when someone collapses. A monthly dated task for the AED guardian keeps the pad check from slipping, and the incident goes on the member's record the same evening, as our guide to accident and incident reporting describes. Where the plan sits alongside your wider risk assessment for club sessions, the risk assessment says why, and the plan says who.

Related reading: how a Wirral walking football club rebuilt its emergency plan after a player's cardiac arrest, and how a Leicester BMX club stopped losing its accident records.