Assessing Risk Management: How Effective Is Your Program?

Litigation in the United States has increased in the past two decades. Appenzeller (2012) stated that "there is a trend toward more diverse issues that have tremendous impact on the sport industry. it seems that no one is immune from litigation today" (p. 3). Physical education has also not been immune from successful legal claims alleging teacher negligence (Dougherty, 2010). Injuries may occur more often in physical education due to the inherent nature of the activities taught Hart & Ritson, 2002). Because of this, the issue of negligence is more common (Dougherty, 2010). Negligence has been defined as a failure to act as a reasonable or sensible professional would act under the circumstances (Black, 2009) and can be equated with carelessness or lacking critical elements during a teaching episode (Carpenter, 2008). In physical education the areas most susceptible to claims of negligence include supervision, instruction, equipment and facilities, and emergency and medical procedures (Dougherty, 2010). Risk management has gained attention as a method to decrease liability and the likelihood of negligence (Appenzeller, 2012; Carpenter, 2008). Carpenter (2008) defined risk management as "an integrated strategy for both conducting safe programs and reducing the potential for loss arising from successful legal claims against the program, its individual employees, and administrators" (p. 71). Risks are inherent in physical activities, and accidents will occur; however, the law does require that teachers and coaches take appropriate measures to ensure participants' safety (Appenzeller, 2012). In determining negligence, courts look at whether or not an educator acted as a reasonable, prudent person would, and whether the risks were foreseeable and could have been prevented (Carpenter, 2008). Physical educators cannot prevent all injuries from happening, but they can be proactive in lessening the likelihood. For this reason risk management should be an integral part of a successful program (Appenzeller, 2012), and risk management techniques should be incorporated into effective teaching practices and physical education programs (Carpenter, 2008). Eickhoff-Shemek, Herbert, and Connaughton (2009) outlined four essential steps to risk management: (1) assessing exposures, (2) developing risk management strategies, (3) implementing risk management strategies, and (4) evaluating the strategies. The purpose of this article is to introduce a risk management inventory that has been developed for public school physical educators to measure and monitor the following program areas: equipment and facilities, supervision, instruction, emergency and medical procedures, and administrative behaviors. Learning through observation and modeling, risk management inventory development -which includes phases of inventory development, categories of the inventory, use of the inventory, and variations of use -and the validity of the inventory will be discussed.