Resuscitation Equipment Checklist for Emergency Response

A resuscitation kit is only as good as the last time somebody opened it. This page gives you three working checklists — a portable emergency response kit, a resuscitation trolley, and a neonatal setup — along with what Australian standards actually require and a checking routine that catches the failures that matter.

It is written for practice managers, WHS coordinators, dental and allied health practices, sports clubs and anyone else who has to be able to show that their emergency equipment is complete, in date and working.

The seven categories every checklist covers

Whether you are stocking a shoulder bag for a football sideline or a full trolley in a day procedure centre, the structure is the same. Work through these seven and you will not leave a hole.

The right-hand column matters more than the left. Almost nobody fails an audit because they never bought a BVM. They fail because the oxygen cylinder is at 3,000 kPa, the defibrillator pads expired fourteen months ago, or the check log stops in March.

Checklist 1 — portable emergency response kit

For GP and dental practices, allied health, workplaces, sports clubs, gyms and anywhere the kit has to be carried to the patient. This is the emergency resuscitation equipment list most Australian settings are working from.

If you would rather buy this assembled than source it item by item, our emergency oxygen and resuscitation kits come pre-built in small and large configurations, including versions with suction included. Individual components are under resuscitation accessories and the full range sits in emergency oxygen and resuscitation.

Checklist 2 — resuscitation trolley

For day procedure centres, larger practices, aged care and clinical settings with a trained response team. A resuscitation trolley equipment list covers everything in the portable kit, plus the items that only make sense when the equipment stays in one place and trained staff are on hand.

Everything from Checklist 1, plus:

• Larger oxygen supply. A size D or larger cylinder, or a wall outlet with a wall-mounted flowmeter, plus a portable cylinder for moving the patient.
• Demand valve resuscitator. For trained operators this delivers oxygen more efficiently than manual bagging and is less tiring over a long resuscitation.
• Mains or wall suction with a collection jar, in addition to the portable unit. Wall suction does not help you in a corridor.
• Defibrillator, with in-date pads and battery, and paediatric pads or a paediatric mode if you see children.
• Full Guedel size range, not a partial set.
• Emergency medicines per your scope of practice, with a documented expiry check.
• Drawer-by-drawer contents list, with a tamper-evident seal or numbered tag so a glance tells you whether it has been opened.
• Sharps container and waste bag attached to the trolley.

Suction for a fixed setting is a different decision from suction for a grab bag — flow rate, jar capacity and whether it runs off mains or battery all change the answer. Our suction units and wall suction ranges cover both, and we have written separately on choosing between portable and piped suction.

Checklist 3 — neonatal resuscitation

For birthing units, midwifery practices, and any setting where a newborn may need support. A neonatal resuscitation equipment checklist is not a scaled-down adult list — the physiology, the sizes and the priorities are different.

In Australia and New Zealand the clinical guidance comes from the ANZCOR Guideline 13 series on newborn resuscitation, which covers planning and risk identification, assessment, airway management and mask ventilation, chest compressions, and medications.1 This checklist is an equipment list to read alongside those guidelines, not a substitute for them.

We stock infant and child bag-valve-mask resuscitators in both reusable and single-use versions, paediatric resuscitation masks, small-size Guedel airways down to 40 mm, low-range oxygen flowmeters and paediatric suction regulators. If you are assembling a neonatal setup and want the sizes checked against your protocol before you order, call 1300 881 824.

What the Australian standards actually require

This is where most checklists either over-reach or stop short. The requirements are more specific than people expect.

General practice — RACGP Standards, 5th edition

Criterion GP5.2 covers practice equipment, and Indicator GP5.2►A requires a practice to hold equipment allowing it to provide comprehensive primary care and emergency resuscitation. On the resuscitation side, the named items include equipment for maintaining an airway in both adults and children, equipment to assist ventilation including bag and mask, oxygen, a pulse oximeter and emergency medicines.2

Two further indicators under the same criterion are easy to miss and are both common audit findings:

• GP5.2►B requires clinical equipment to be maintained in line with each manufacturer's recommendations. That is a documentation obligation as much as a servicing one — you need to be able to show it.
• GP5.2►E requires the practice to have a defibrillator.

Note the wording on airways: adults and children. A practice that holds only adult sizes does not meet the indicator, regardless of how rarely it sees children.

Hospitals and day procedure services

Facilities accredited against the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards fall under the Recognising and Responding to Acute Deterioration Standard, which requires systems for responding to deterioration — and a response system implies equipment that is available, complete and working.3

Non-clinical workplaces

Obligations come from your state or territory work health and safety legislation and from your own risk assessment, rather than from a single national equipment list. A remote worksite, a swimming pool and an office have genuinely different answers. Your first aid or WHS coordinator is the right person to set the standard; this checklist is a starting point for the conversation.

Sizing airways and masks — do not rely on colour

Guedel airways are colour-coded, and the colours are not standardised across manufacturers. A green airway from one brand is not necessarily the same size as a green airway from another. If your practice has restocked from more than one supplier over the years, the colours in your drawer may not mean what the person reaching for them assumes.

Size by measurement, not by colour. The conventional method is to hold the airway against the patient's face and measure from the centre of the incisors to the angle of the jaw. Label your sizes in millimetres on the storage, and train to the measurement.

These are guides to what to stock, not a substitute for measuring on the patient. A complete range is the point — we sell Guedel airways individually and as a set of six precisely because partial sets are what checklists find.

The checking routine

A checklist you run once is an inventory. A checklist you run on a schedule is a system. Three tiers, and the point of the first one is that it takes seconds.

1. Every day or shift — the glance The kit or trolley is in its place, the seal or tag is intact and the number matches the log, and the oxygen cylinder gauge is above minimum. Sign it. Thirty seconds.
2. Monthly — the open Break the seal. Check contents against the list, check every expiry date, check the suction unit actually draws, check the BVM valve moves and the mask is not perished, check defibrillator pads and battery dates. Reseal with a new numbered tag and log the number.
3. Annually — the service Regulator and flowmeter serviced or replaced per the manufacturer's schedule, cylinder test dates confirmed, suction unit serviced, defibrillator self-test history reviewed. This is the tier that satisfies GP5.2►B, and the tier most often skipped.
4. After every use — the restock Immediately, not at the next scheduled check. The most dangerous kit in any building is the one that was used last week and put back.
5. After every staff change — the walkthrough New staff are shown where the kit is and what is in it. A kit nobody can find in the dark is not a resource.

We service and repair resuscitation, therapy and suction equipment, and we maintain and test defibrillators — including for organisations that bought the unit elsewhere. See resuscitation and suction equipment servicing and defibrillator service, repair and maintenance.

The five things most often missing

From what we see when kits come in for servicing and restocking, these are the recurring gaps. None of them are exotic.

1. Paediatric sizes An adult BVM, adult masks and three middle-sized Guedels. The RACGP indicator names children explicitly, and a practice that occasionally sees a child needs the sizes for that child.
2. Working suction Either absent entirely, or present with a battery that went flat eighteen months ago. Airway obstruction by vomit is one of the most common reversible problems in a collapse, and no amount of oxygen fixes it.
3. A current Bodok seal The small sealing washer between cylinder and regulator. It perishes, it gets lost when cylinders are swapped, and without it the regulator leaks audibly and delivers nothing useful. Keep spares in the kit.
4. In-date defibrillator consumables Pads and batteries both expire, usually on different dates, and the unit's self-test does not always make it obvious. Put both dates in the log rather than trusting the indicator light.
5. The check log itself The most common finding of all. The equipment is fine; the record stops some months ago. From an accreditation standpoint an unrecorded check did not happen.

Common questions

Getting your list checked

If you are putting a kit together, preparing for accreditation, or working out whether what you already own still meets the requirements, send us your current contents list and we will go through it against the categories above. We would rather tell you that you need one Bodok seal and a child's mask than sell you a new kit.

Call 1300 881 824, or browse emergency oxygen and resuscitation equipment, resuscitation accessories and suction equipment.

References

1. Australian and New Zealand Committee on Resuscitation. ANZCOR Guidelines — Newborn Resuscitation (Guideline 13.1 to 13.10). anzcor.org
2. Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. Standards for general practices (5th edition), Criterion GP5.2 — Practice equipment. racgp.org.au
3. Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Recognising and Responding to Acute Deterioration Standard, NSQHS Standards. safetyandquality.gov.au