An AED monthly check takes about a minute: look at the status indicator, confirm the pads and battery are present and in date, check the rescue kit is complete, and record it. It is the most repetitive document in workplace safety and the one most often done from memory at the end of the quarter — which is exactly the failure this form exists to prevent.
What actually goes wrong with defibrillators
Almost never the device. AEDs self-test and report their own state, and a unit showing a green indicator is very likely to work.
What goes wrong is everything around it. Pads reach their expiry date — they have a gel that dries out, and they are the single most common failure found on these checks. Batteries expire. The rescue kit gets raided for scissors. The cabinet alarm battery dies quietly. The unit gets moved during a refurbishment and the signage still points at the old wall.
Every one of those is invisible until somebody needs the device, and every one of them is caught by a sixty-second look.
Why this form remembers last month
The serial number does not change. The model does not change. The location does not change. The pad expiry date does not change until you replace the pads — at which point you change it once and it stays changed.
Re-typing all of that twelve times a year is how monthly checks turn into quarterly checks and then into nothing. This form carries the unit details and expiry dates forward from your last check on the same template, so each month you are confirming rather than transcribing.
Never make somebody redo what could have been remembered. On a document this repetitive it is the difference between a check that survives the year and one that does not.
Record the expiry dates, not just "in date"
A tick saying pads are in date tells you nothing about next month. An actual date tells you when to order replacements — and pads typically have a shelf life of two to five years from manufacture, so the warning is available years in advance if anybody writes it down.
This form asks for the dates and then asks you to confirm they are still in the future. Once entered they carry forward, so the cost is one month of typing and the benefit is every month after it.
One unit per check
If your site has several defibrillators, do a separate check for each one. It is tempting to build a single form listing all of them, and it produces a document nobody can use — when the question is "was the unit in the east stairwell checked in March", a combined record makes you read the whole thing.
A minute each, one record each, filed under the unit. That is also how anybody auditing you will expect to find it.
Common questions
How often should an AED be checked?
Monthly is the widely accepted interval and what most manufacturers and workplace guidance recommend. The device self-tests far more often than that — typically daily or weekly — but the self-test cannot tell you the pads have been removed, the cabinet is blocked, or the rescue kit is missing its scissors.
What does the status indicator mean?
It is the device reporting the outcome of its own self-test. A green tick, an OK, or an equivalent symbol means the last self-test passed. A red cross, a flashing light or an audible beep means it did not, and that is a stop-everything finding — the unit needs attention the same day, not at the next monthly check.
How long do AED pads last?
Typically two to five years from manufacture, depending on the model, and the date is printed on the package. They expire because the conductive gel dries out. Expired pads are the most common reason an AED check fails, and they are also the easiest thing in the whole process to have ordered in advance.
Who is allowed to do this check?
Anybody who has been shown what to look at. It is not a technical inspection and it does not require clinical training — the device does the technical part itself. What it does require is somebody who will actually go and look every month.
Do we need to record it?
For any workplace that has chosen to provide a defibrillator, yes in practice. The record is what shows the device was maintained in working order, and it is the first thing asked for if the unit ever fails when it is needed.