Why it matters
The plan has to exist before the emergency
- Survival from cardiac arrest, heat stroke and other emergencies is decided in the first few minutes, at the venue.
- Those minutes are lost to planning gaps: who calls 911, where the AED is, which gate EMS uses.
- NATA calls for a written, rehearsed, posted plan for every venue, and many states require one.
New to EAPs? Read the longer version
Sudden cardiac arrest, exertional heat stroke, catastrophic head and neck injury and severe bleeding can be survivable, and survival is decided in the first few minutes, at the venue rather than the hospital. In cardiac arrest the odds fall with every minute before compressions and defibrillation.
Those minutes disappear when nobody is certain who calls 911, when the AED is locked in an office three buildings away, or when the ambulance pulls up to a gate that only opens from the inside. None of those are medical problems. They are planning problems, solved in advance or not at all.
That is why the National Athletic Trainers' Association calls for a written, venue-specific Emergency Action Plan, developed with local EMS, rehearsed at least annually, and posted where it will be used. A plan for “the program” is not a plan for the softball field a quarter mile down the road, with a different address, a different gate and a different nearest AED.
Respara joins response and preparation into one name, because a response is only as good as the preparation finished before it was needed.
What you build
- 1Add a venue
Its own address, gate and access notes for EMS.
- 2Assign the people
Who calls 911, gets the AED, meets EMS.
- 3Mark up the map
AEDs, first aid, cold tubs and EMS entrances.
- 4Route to definitive care
Hospitals with travel times and a primary.
- 5Set the protocols
NATA protocols, pre-written and editable.
- 6Print it, post it, share it
Signs, bag tags, plans and the binder.
- 7Rehearse it
Graded scenarios from the venue’s own plan.
- 8Keep the record current
Approvals, CPR dates and AED checks, dated.
See each step in detail
Each field, court, gym, and pool gets its own plan: address, GPS coordinates, what3words, and the details an ambulance crew actually needs. Which gate, which access road, where the lockbox is.
Name who calls 911, who retrieves the AED, who meets EMS, who controls the scene, who documents it. Roles, not job titles, so the plan still works when the head athletic trainer is at an away game.
Drop AEDs, first aid kits, cold-water immersion tubs, bleeding-control kits, and EMS entrances onto a real image of your venue. Colors follow NATA convention, not your own brand palette, so a marker means the same thing at every site.
List the receiving hospitals with travel times and designate a primary. The plan says where the athlete is going before anyone has to decide it under pressure.
The eight standard emergency conditions arrive already written from NATA guidance: cardiac arrest, heat illness, head and spine injury, and the rest. Every one of them is editable to match your own medical direction. Turn on the WBGT heat policy and your region's activity levels print alongside them in every outdoor plan.
A venue plan, a wall sign, a bag tag, the full binder. Documents, not screens, ready to hang in a dugout or hand to a coach. Share links let officials and visiting teams read a plan without an account, and can be revoked.
Rehearsal Mode picks a venue, a sport and the coaches in the room, and builds scenarios from that venue's own details: the gate EMS uses, where the AED actually is, which hospital and how far. Cardiac arrest is always one of them. The facilitator checks off each step as the staff complete it; a scenario passes at 80%, or 90% for cardiac arrest, spinal injury and anaphylaxis. A debrief follows, any missed scenario is rerun, and every attempt is logged on each coach's record. A scenario that doesn't fit your venue is swapped with Does not apply, and Roles & assignments opens over the walkthrough to show who holds each role, with any unfilled role flagged.
Dated approvals, a coach roster with each coach's sports, last rehearsal and CPR expiration (import the list once, update a whole class's CPR dates at once), and every AED checked with pad and battery expiry reminders. Each record filters down to what needs attention. A plan pointing at a dead AED is worse than no plan at all.
Required, and asked for
Many states require a written plan for each venue in school athletics, and everyone else is held to the same standard of care. Having a plan and being able to show you had one are different things. Respara keeps the dated record as you go.
Who asks, and what the record holds
A growing number of states require school athletics programs to keep a written emergency action plan for each venue, reviewed annually and rehearsed with the staff who would run it. The specifics vary by state and by association, so check your own, and check what your league or insurer expects. Youth sports organizations, clubs and parks departments are often outside the statute and inside the same expectation: nobody is held to a lower standard of care because the field is theirs rather than a district's.
The record is what gets asked for: by an athletic director, a district office, an insurer, a state association, or a family afterwards. Every venue plan carries its address, access notes and review date. Approvals are dated and named. Rehearsals are logged per coach, with every graded attempt, and the platform will run the rehearsal with you. AED checks carry initials and dates. All of it exports as a PDF or spreadsheet you can hand over.
To be plain about the limits: documentation is not immunity, and nothing here is legal advice.
Start from the plan you have
Upload your current plan (PDF, Word or a scan) and it's read into a draft: venues, roles, hospitals, AEDs and emergency numbers. You review it field by field before any of it is kept.
- It doesn't guess. Missing in your document means blank in the draft.
- It doesn't overwrite your work. It fills empty fields and adds venues.
- It lists what it couldn't use. So you know what didn't come across.
- It flags what it struggled to read. Vague or badly scanned pages are marked.
More on how an import works
It doesn't guess. If your document has no GPS coordinates, the draft has none either. A blank field is the honest answer, and a made-up gate or phone number in an emergency plan is worse than an empty one.
It doesn't overwrite your work. Applying an import fills empty fields and adds new venues. Anything you have already typed stays exactly as you typed it, and the summary afterwards tells you where it left your version alone.
It lists what it couldn't use. Concussion return-to-play protocols, heat index charts, consent forms: the things this platform has nowhere to put are listed back to you, so you know what did not come across instead of assuming it all did.
It flags what it struggled to read. A venue described in one vague sentence, or a bad scan, is marked as worth a closer look rather than presented with the same confidence as a clearly written page.
The point of an import is not to finish your plan. It is to get the typing out of the way so the part that needs your judgment, and your medical direction, is what you spend time on.
Buying with confidence
- Look before you sign up
- Nothing is charged without a confirmation
- Your card details never reach our servers
- Purchase orders, approved before access
- An import never replaces what you wrote
- Your documents are always yours
- Canceling is not a trapdoor
- One organization's data is invisible to another
- You control who reads and who edits
How each of these works
The demo is a complete working workspace with sample data and no account required. Nothing you do in it touches a real database, and there is nothing to cancel afterward.
First year, setup fee, mid-year upgrade: every charge shows you the exact amount and waits for you to accept it. No silent charges, no default-on add-ons, no surprise line items.
Card entry happens inside Stripe's own payment form, embedded in our billing page. Your card number goes straight from your browser to Stripe. Our application never sees it, transmits it, or stores it. We keep the brand and last four digits, nothing else.
Request a purchase order invoice and nothing is charged until it is approved. We issue a net-30 invoice your business office or treasurer can process, and checks are recorded by hand when they arrive. If the purchase is turned down upstream, you were never billed.
Uploading your old plan fills empty fields and adds venues. It never overwrites a value you entered, and it says so afterwards where it left yours in place. Nothing is written until you have reviewed it field by field.
Every plan, sign, bag tag, and binder downloads whenever you want it, and export is never restricted by the state of your subscription. Nobody should find their Emergency Action Plan paywalled during an emergency.
Cancel from the billing page whenever you like. The renewal stops and you keep the year you already paid for. No cancellation fee, no phone call, no retention gauntlet.
Every workspace is a separate tenant. Each read and write is checked against your membership in that organization on the server; a workspace id handed over by a browser is never trusted on its own.
Owner, admin, editor, and view-only roles mean a coach can read the plan without rewriting it. Share links are individually revocable and can be set to expire.
What we don't claim
Respara is a planning and documentation tool, not medical direction. Every plan must be reviewed and approved by your own qualified personnel. We hold no formal compliance certifications, and store no athlete medical records.
The longer version
This platform does not practice medicine, it does not supervise your events, and it cannot make a plan correct for your venues. The protocol text ships from published NATA guidance as a starting point. Every word of it, and every plan you build, must be reviewed and approved by your own qualified medical and administrative personnel before it goes into use.
We make no SOC 2, HIPAA, or FERPA attestation, because we do not hold them. Instead we keep the amount of sensitive information here low by design: plans hold venue logistics and staff role assignments, not athlete medical records. Card handling is Stripe's, not ours. And because export is never restricted, you can always hold your own copy of everything you build here, which is the most durable protection there is against depending on any vendor, us included.
Start with the demo
See a finished plan before you decide anything, then check pricing.
Built and supported by Team21 Training & Recovery.