Next year a student coming into my grade level has a severe allergy that means there is a possibility that an epi-pen might need to be used. Apparently there is another student in another grade as well. The nurse is looking for teachers that are willing to get trained on how to administer the epi-pen, if needed, if she is out of the building or can't get there fast enough. I'm sure none of my team is going to volunteer and being the lead teacher, I will be asked. I understand the need, but I'm thinking that there is a serious liability surrounding this as well.
IMO every teacher in that building should know how to administer an epi-pen. What do they do when the one trained teacher is out sick? And someone (probably you, since you're a lead teacher) should call your HR department and cover all the liability bases just for peace of mind. The more people who know how to do it, the more likely it is someone -will- do it, because you can look at the other teachers and say "Now? Like this?" and at least get "ummm, yeah, i think so"
I work in HR for an educational nonprofit. This summer we have our first severely peanut/treenut allergic child. As soon as the health form came in, I gathered up our head of summer programs and our operations lead. In less than an half-hour we had:
1) A list liability questions from the realistic (What happens if we give the epi-pen and it isn't needed?) to the absurd (What happens if I smash the epi-pen into his artery and he starts to bleed out all over the floor?)
2) A plan for what we were telling various people involved
a) Everyone involved in the workshop will know how to administer an epi-pen, including the high-school interns helping out and where it is kept. We treated this -exactly- like we do firedrills/evacuation procedures "There's a kid who might need an epi-pen in your workshop - we're teaching you all to do it on date X at time Y.
b) workshop participants and non-involved interns will be told there's a severe peanut/treenut allergy, but not who it is, just that they can't bring nut-based snacks that week
c) non-involved staff will know there's a student with severe peanut/treenut allergies and will have the student discreetly pointed out to them. No nut-based snacks for staff, no opening the jar of PB you keep in your desk that week
d) every staff person knows the plan if there is a need to administer the epi-pen, and roles were assigned to keep the mass of interested bystanders under control and out of the way/make things run more smoothly - primary and backup
3) A list of questions for the parents to clarify if we needed to be more paranoid about our classroom prep (potential nut oils on the keyboard keys, mostly)
10 minutes on the phone with our liability carrier clarified that as long as we were employing the people involved in administering an epi-pen; -any- act they took and the potential negative affects thereof were covered. If we dropped him on his head while hauling him into the elevator and he developed swelling in his brain and died (we're a through lot!) then it was covered. And they were happy to fax me that clarification in writing.
The whole thing, including notifications/training people to use the epi-pen took less than an hour and was kind of a non-event.
I didn't say anything about standing and watching a child die. I am not required to be trained. I was curious about the liability issue and whether I should take on that responsibility. The child's 3rd grade teacher is trained, but the other 4 teachers on that grade level are not. 
