Guess The State!

[theweaselking]

School nurse confiscates medication of asthmatic child, locks him in nurse's office, and stands there watching as he passes out because he can't breathe.

*Other* school employees had contacted his mother, who arrived, opened the door, and called 911.

[Poll #1842627]

Comments

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Apparently it's policy there that if you *can't* give medication to a kid, you call 911 and let the EMTs do it.

But she didn't do it.

(Likely because there's an UNOFFICIAL-but-if-you-violate-it-you're-fired policy that you do not call 911, ever, because 911 calls from schools are tracked. A school with too many 911 calls, no matter how justified, is labelled a dangerous school and can lose funding under NCLB. This exact unofficial no-911-ever policy has caused all kinds of trouble.)

And yes, she gets no money ever. The schoolboard gets no money ever.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

IANAL, but from conversation with the RNs at the office my understanding is that a nurse refusing to provide assistance to someone in distress is looking at having his/her license to practice yanked PDQ pending review by the profession's own board. (At least, up here in my neck of the taiga anyway.) The choice between obeying a bad policy and retaining one's ability to practice somewhere with sane policies should be a no-brainer.

-- Steve thinks there are some pretty ineffective administrators on the planet, but even those ones should recognise that leaving one's wards to die is a bad idea for a great many reasons.

[plantyhamchuk.livejournal.com]

I haven't kept up with this story, but last I heard the nurse wasn't an RN, something about how Florida state law doesn't require certification. That's the problem with the term 'nurse', it doesn't mean anything unless someone has some credentials after their name.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Many uncivilised places do not require registration, or training, to be a nurse. It's shocking, I know - there are even, to my horror, places that let people call themselves an "Engineer" without an engineering degree, or a "Doctor" without a PhD.

[tsunami-ryuu.livejournal.com]

And a hearty fuck you to this lady from a lifelong asthmatic who has had attacks just as bad as this. There are few sensations as horrible as drowning on dry land.

I'm lucky that my asthma is much more mild, but yes, agreed with everything you said. I join you in your hearty FUCK YOU to the school. Of all the various pains/illnesses/unpleasantness I've experienced in my life, the sensation of suffocation during an asthma attack (or anaphylactic allergic reaction) has been the worst and most terrifying I've ever endured. Fuck the nurse and the school for making that child unnecessarily suffer through such visceral terror.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

People who would rather toe an imaginary corporate line than save someone's life should not be in the medical profession.

No, really.

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

We've just had our school asthma training, and it's very specific - we supervise them with their puffer, and if it gets better they can go back to class, and if it doesn't it's ambulance time and no arguments.

I'm shuddering at your situations.

[drcuriosity]

Here's another one for later.

[the-dense.livejournal.com]

damn, beaten to it.

[skington.livejournal.com]

I came to this comment thread to post the same story.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I was talking about this story elsewhere and I realized it's a very real application of the Milgram experiment. She felt she was following the rules and therefore she was killing the kid.

[cleodhna.livejournal.com]

Fucking Texas school did that to me too. It wasn't that my parents hadn't signed the form-- kids weren't allowed to carry any medications at all, under any circumstances, ever. To top that off, if you needed your drugs, they made you walk this idiotic circuitous route to the nurses' room and if you dared step off the maze-- though there was a perfectly straightforward path-- they'd haul your ass off to the principal's office where you could sit gasping for the rest of the day. This even if attacks are a pretty much daily thing.

Even if she hadn't had the medicine-- which she did-- there are other ways to help someone having an attack, and this "nurse" did nothing? Child endangerment charges should be filed against her and the school and however far up this policy making goes. Asthma kills people. When it doesn't, it's miserable. People who make policies like this and then put them into practise should have their faces saran-wrapped for four minutes. See how they like it.