Setting Up a School Sick Bay: Requirements, Layout and Supplies List

No single national standard tells an Australian school what its sick bay must contain. The duty arrives instead through your state education department's policy and your work health and safety obligations, and the two rarely sit on the same page. Department policy tends to come without a shopping list, and a supplier catalogue without the policy behind it. This guide gives you both halves: what the school sick bay requirements actually are, and a room fit-out and supplies list to build from.

What are the requirements for a school sick bay?

A school sick bay is a quiet, accessible rest area with a sink, a stocked first aid kit, secure storage for student medication (asthma and anaphylaxis medication kept accessible, not locked away), clear signage and a record of care given. For government schools, the minimum requirements are set by the state education department's policy, and non-government schools follow their own sector guidance.

In Victoria, the Department of Education's Policy and Advisory Library sets the baseline for government schools. Its First Aid for Students and Staff policy carries separate guidance chapters on first aid rooms and sick bays and on medication, and it expects those facilities to meet a minimum standard. In New South Wales, the Department of Education's Student health and wellbeing policy covers medication administration and health support planning in the same structured way. Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia each run their own instruments, and independent and Catholic schools sit under their sector guidance, so the safe pattern is to check your own state education department policy rather than assume a national rule that does not exist.

Over the top of all of this sits work health and safety law. A school is a workplace, so your state's work health and safety law and its first aid code of practice (in Victoria, WorkSafe's Compliance code: First aid in the workplace) apply alongside the education policy, which is why the sick bay has to serve staff as well as students. Our guide to first aid for schools and community organisations covers that wider compliance picture.

Room and layout

Position the sick bay near the front office and close to toilets, so a supervising staff member can keep an eye on a resting student and reach a basin quickly. Fit a couch or bed with a waterproof, wipeable cover, plus a chair for a parent or staff member who stays with the child. The room needs handwashing access, ventilation and enough privacy for a student to rest or change. Clear signage and a plan for access outside normal office hours round out the basics, because incidents do not wait for the bell.

Keep the space single-purpose where you can. A sick bay that doubles as a storeroom or meeting room is harder to keep inspection-ready, because the couch gets buried and the kit wanders off.

Medication storage and administration

Student medication belongs in a lockable cabinet, with refrigeration used only where a medication's own instructions or a treating doctor direct it. Emergency medication is the exception to locking up: adrenaline autoinjectors and asthma relievers are kept unlocked and rapidly accessible, in line with your state education department's anaphylaxis and asthma policies, because a locked device in an emergency is no device at all.

Store each device as per the printed instructions on the device and its Consumer Medicine Information, keep adrenaline autoinjectors out of direct light and heat, and never refrigerate them. Back the storage with a medication administration register and current medication authority forms, so every dose given is documented and every device has a named owner and a checked expiry date on file.

Infection control and exclusion periods

A sick bay sees sick children, so infection control is part of the fit-out, not an afterthought. Wipeable surfaces, disposable gloves, a lined waste bin and a cleaning routine between students keep the room from becoming a transmission point.

The other half is knowing when a child should go home and stay home. Victoria's Department of Health publishes a school exclusion table that sets minimum exclusion periods for primary schools and children's services by condition, for example excluding a child with chickenpox until all blisters have dried, which is usually at least five days after the rash appears in unimmunised children but may be less in immunised children. Check the equivalent table for your own state, and keep a printed copy in the sick bay so the call is consistent no matter who is on duty.

The school sick bay supplies list

A stocked first aid kit sits at the centre of the supplies list, but a sick bay needs more than the kit. Group your list by function so nothing gets missed at fit-out or restock. Write a par level beside each line, the quantity you restock back to, so whoever does the restock is working from a number rather than a guess.

The list below suits a typical primary or secondary sick bay, so set the par levels against your enrolment. In Victoria, the first aid rooms chapter asks a sick bay to meet as many as possible of its minimum first aid room items, which include a sink with hot and cold water, a telephone and a list of emergency numbers, a resuscitation mask and a biohazard waste container.

• Assessment: digital thermometer with disposable covers, disposable gloves in several sizes, a resuscitation mask, a torch, a notepad and pen.
• Wound care: assorted plasters, sterile gauze and non-adherent dressings, single-use saline ampoules, wound cleaning wipes, triangular and crepe bandages, adhesive tape, scissors and tweezers.
• Hygiene and infection control: boxes of disposable gloves, hand sanitiser, surface wipes, a lined waste bin, a biohazard waste container and a sharps disposal system.
• Linen and comfort: waterproof couch covers or disposable bed rolls, a blanket, vomit bags and a couple of instant cool packs.
• Paperwork: the treatment register, the medication administration register, medication authority forms, sick bay summary slips, a list of emergency telephone numbers and individual anaphylaxis and asthma action plans kept on file.

A model school first aid kit and refill packs cover many of the wound care lines above. Browse the school first aid kits for the kit itself, then match refill packs to your kit model so restocking is a swap, not a guessing game. Every kit we assemble is opened and checked against its manifest before it leaves our East Bendigo warehouse, expiry dates and all, so what arrives is ready to go on the shelf.

For whole-of-school kit placement beyond the sick bay itself, our guide to equipping your school with the right first aid kits covers where each kit lives, and the school first aid kit essentials list goes deeper on the contents.

Records that stand up to an audit

Two registers do most of the work. A treatment register logs every visit, what happened and what was done, and a sick bay summary slip goes home with the student so parents know what you observed and treated. Those records feed your incident reporting and give you the audit trail an inspection asks for. Keep the registers with the kit, not in a filing cabinet down the hall, so they actually get filled in.

When to call 000

Some presentations skip the sick bay entirely. Call triple zero (000) for a student who is unresponsive, has difficulty breathing, shows signs of a severe allergic reaction, has a suspected spinal injury, or has bleeding you cannot control, and give first aid while you wait for paramedics to arrive and take over. Anything below that threshold usually means contacting the parent or carer, giving first aid and recommending GP follow-up where needed. Write down what you saw and did either way, because the note is what protects the student and the school afterwards.

Fit out your sick bay in one order

A new sick bay, or an old one brought up to standard, can be one order rather than a dozen. First Aid Distributions assembles and supplies school first aid kits, refills, signage and consumables on a single school account. Start with our school first aid kits, where each product page shows current pricing and delivery. To set up a school account or get a quote for the full fit-out, call 03 5443 2239 or email info@firstaiddistributions.com.au.

Related articles

• First aid compliance for Australian schools: the policy and audit-trail obligations behind the sick bay.
• Equipping your school with the right first aid kits: where every kit should live across the school.
• Childcare first aid requirements: the equivalent obligations for ECEC services.