Many readers recently finished their summer camp season. The pace of autumn, with its cool evenings and time to sit with feet propped on a trusty hamper, is an excellent time to mull ideas and review notes. It’s also the time to update materials for the next season. As a result, this article focuses on updating your camp’s health-care plan by presenting ideas to guide your revision process. Information is drawn from current literature, changing practices, and those elements of your program that provide indicators of your camp’s health status.

As you contemplate each topic, remember that camp practices–especially those in sensitive areas like health care–must comply with the regulations that govern your camp’s operation. While ideas are global, their application must be locally sensitive. Consequently, remember to have revisions reviewed by appropriate people such as legal council, trusted parents, camp health-care staff, your program’s supervising physician, and your insurance specialist.

What Indicators Should I Note From My Camp’s Experience?

Policy updates and changes should be driven by a need to change. So the first step begins with a review of your camp-specific data. Consider what the information from the next few paragraphs tells you. It will provide an indication not only of what might need changing but also how critical that change is to your camp’s operation.

Begin with your camp log and a summer calendar. Count the number of people seen each day in your health center and mark that number on the calendar. Do not include those people who received a daily medication; we’ll get to them later. Rather, simply count the number of campers and staff who were seen for emergent health needs. Assuming a normal population, which includes people with chronic health needs like asthma, a camp health center usually sees about 10 percent-15 percent of its population on any given day. Does this reflect the experience of your camp’s health center? Some days will be very quiet and others will be very busy; in general, however, look for a tendency to cluster around this 10-15 percentile target.