Safety Contacts on the Call Sheet: A 1st AD's Emergency Block Checklist

The emergency block is the most-read part of your call sheet

Every call sheet carries a safety block: hospital, set medic, emergency numbers. Most of the crew never reads it, until the one day they need it. When a grip slices a hand on a C-stand at hour nine, or a PA twists an ankle crossing a dark parking lot, the emergency block decides whether the response is calm or five minutes of panicked searching. The calm version always traces back to a block built the night before and verified that morning.

What belongs in the emergency block

Start with the basics and work outward. Every line in the block earns its place by answering a question someone will ask under stress.

• Nearest hospital: full name, street address, and direct phone number. Nearest means the one you would actually drive to, not the famous trauma center across town. On location, that is often a regional hospital you have never used before, so the full address matters more than the name alone.
• Nearest urgent care: for the sprains and minor cuts that never need an ER. Crews ask for this number more than the hospital's.
• Set medic: name, cell, and exact staging location. Medic on set is useless if nobody can find them. Note their vehicle or trailer.
• UPM and line producer cells: when an emergency pulls someone off set, production needs to know within minutes, not at lunch. These numbers bridge the gap between the immediate response and the paperwork that follows.
• Safety supervisor or stunt coordinator: on stunt, SFX, or minor-cast days, this contact is required, not optional.
• Location emergency details: the address as dispatch would need it, because the gate you enter through often has a different street address than the building itself. Add the site security or fire watch contact for locations that provide one.
• Nearest pharmacy: prescriptions, forgotten medications, and refill runs all end up here.
• Evacuation meeting point: one sentence. In case of alarm, gather at the north corner of the lot.

Verify it every morning, not once a week

A hospital that was correct on Monday can be wrong on Wednesday. Company moves reset everything. Verify the block each shoot day.

• Run the route from set to the hospital in your maps app. Look for closures and one-lane roads that turn a ten-minute drive into twenty-five.
• Confirm the hospital still runs an emergency department. Smaller regional hospitals change hours, and some facilities redirect trauma elsewhere.
• Walk the actual entrance. Note which door is the ER and where the ambulance bay sits, so you can direct a driver without guessing.
• Call the set medic before crew call and confirm where they are staged. Medics move with their gear.
• Type the location address into a maps app and check the pin. If the pin lands on the wrong building, dispatch will go to the wrong building. Fix the address on the sheet until the pin is right.

Format it so it works under pressure

In an emergency, nobody scrolls. Put the safety block on page one, near the general call times, where eyes land first.

• One page, one block. Keep every emergency contact together, never scattered through department notes.
• Name first, then number, then address. Under stress, people scan for names.
• No abbreviations an out-of-town PA would not know. Spell out the full hospital name.
• Keep it current. If the medic changes midday, issue a revised call sheet and announce it at the next safety meeting. A revision number exists for exactly this reason.

Common emergency-block mistakes

• Hospital name with no address. There are three facilities with the same name in the county.
• Copying yesterday's block onto a new location. Every company move resets the hospital, pharmacy, rally point, and dispatch address.
• Hiding it below the fold. The safety block lives on page one, near the top.
• Skipping urgent care. Minor injuries outnumber major ones ten to one.
• No medic staging note. A phone number does not help when the medic is somewhere on a forty-acre ranch.

What never goes on the call sheet

The block has a hard boundary. Respect it.

• Individual medical details. A note about a crew member's allergy or condition does not belong on a distributed document. Give the medic a private heads-up instead.
• Personal home numbers. If someone offers a home landline just in case, push back politely. The cell is the contact.
• Anything you have not verified. An unverified hospital number is worse than a blank line, because it creates false confidence.

Say it out loud at the morning meeting

A safety block nobody hears about is a formality. At the safety meeting, read the three lines that matter: the hospital, where the medic is staged, and the meeting point. It takes twenty seconds. Crews remember what they heard said aloud.

The call sheet is the only document every person on set receives. If the safety plan is not on it, it does not exist.

Build it once, reuse it right

Keep a master template with your regular medic, pharmacy, and studio-zone hospital numbers, then customize for each location. A tool like Easy Call Sheets keeps your contacts and locations saved, so the block carries over and you only update what changed that day. Build it the night before, verify it in the morning, and say it out loud. That is the whole routine.