Do you have a plan in place in case of a medical emergency in your kids ministry? Being prepared with an Emergency Responder Team is a really big deal that is often overlooked in churches.

It was a normal Sunday until a baby bit another baby above her upper lip. The injury broke thru the skin and was bleeding... A LOT! Since we needed to contact the parents ASAP, we called the media guys in the sanctuary to post the preassigned ID number for each of the babies involved. Then we said we needed medical assistance. Like... Do you know if there is a doctor or nurse on campus that can come and check this kid out?

Can you guess what happened? Since there was no system in place yet to alert a medical team that we needed assistance, the media person had posted the words, "A doctor or nurse is needed in the nursery." Next, the preassigned ID numbers of each child were posted on the screen. Can you see where this was going? We were in for a big surprise!

First of all, I saw the mom of the child who had been bitten. She was running down the long hallway towards me, screaming... "My baby! My baby!" as she ran out of her high heeled shoes as quickly as she could. Next I see the grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, aunts, uncles, etc of the baby that was "the biter" Next, there are church staff members running towards me... and of course, there are other people who are just coming along to see what's going on. Yes, it was an army of people. YIKES!

It all worked out in the end, and we learned a valuable lesson. We needed an Emergency Responder Team in place AND a way to contact them without everyone knowing what we were doing.

Some ideas for you: Build an #EmergencyResponderTeam at your church, consisting of doctors, nurses, firemen, etc that you can call on during an emergency. This way you can send a text for assistance should the need arise. Aside from texting them, you can choose a preassigned number to post on the media screen so they will know help is needed. If you choose this option, you will need to set some guidelines in place so you don't have a handful of emergency responders get up and rush toward your kids ministry environment... like I did :)

How about you? Do you have some comments about this? Have any ideas you would love to share with other church leaders about what to do in this kind of situation?

This is the third post in a series of how to have a secure environment for kids so their families can safely stop, drop off their kids, and run to worship service!

You can check out the others posts in this series from the links below:
Keeping Kids Safe - The Drop-Off
Keeping Kids Safe - Check-in Systems

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