Scaling Event Medical Cover

Scaling event medical cover means sizing the people, skills, equipment and vehicles to the risks a medical needs assessment identifies, rather than to a fixed ratio of staff to attendees.

The temptation is a ratio: so many first aiders per 1,000 people, an ambulance above a certain crowd size. Attendance ratios alone cannot determine cover, because events of the same size generate very different work. A family fun run and a music festival with a licensed bar are different problems, and so is the same event in June and in November. Minimums may still apply, set by a governing body, a safety certificate or local conditions, but none of them calculates the answer for you.

Sport and exercise medicine (SEM) clinicians are often the person asked how many staff an event needs. Planning Event Medical Cover sets out who commissions and carries out the assessment; this page covers what goes into it and what comes out.