[Suezq]

How many of you have O2 in your office?

We have a Global teacher in our school district who wants us to have it in our office. We are a rural community with excellent an excellent response time by our vol. amb. service (<5 minutes) and they bring the O2 with them.

What brought up this discussion, was, one of the "summer boys" put his arm through a window when cleaning and needed 54 sutures. He lost some blood and was a little shocky when he arrived at the nurses office. Pressure was applied, elevated arm, and by the time she got his arm raised the ambulance was in her office. Now the global teacher wants/feels we need to have O2 on site.

Any one know what is involved with this? Any arguements for or against this. So far, we (3 nurses in my school) are against.

[kids]

Schools in our district (and the 3 around us) are required to have O2 available regardless of the response time of EMS.

I feel given that you are in a rural community with a volunteer EMS that YES, you should have O2. My inlaws live in such a community, if the one ambulence is out there is nobody (people die from farm accidents in their area).

[MomNRN]

We do have O2 in our office, but I think it is a leftover from when we had a child with serious respiratory issues.

I am starting my third year at this school and haven't had to even look at it (THANK GOD)! I plan to check it out tomorrow.

I do use it to tease teachers and principals with. We have an autistic child who is a runner. Whenever he takes off, I usually wheel the O2 out "just in case." They don't always appreciate my humor, but I do!

[Jeanine]

We have O2 in the offices in our district. The problem lies in the fact that it is a medication and NJ nurses are not allowed to administer medication without a Dr's order. We have a blanket order for emergencies but it doesn't say how many liters or whether it is to be administered via mask, n/c, etc. We try and aviod using it and wait for the police or EMS to arive if possible. The whole issue is still being debated at our monthly nurses' meetings and this has been an issue of concern for years. We still haven't agreed on a policy.

[Suezq]

Yeah, you have all made some good points to keep in mind. I guess if we ended up having O2 in our offices we would have to have a blanket order from the school's physician....just like we do for the Epi-pen. We are still pretty much against having it at this time, but I am open to seeing other sides of arguement.

What is the cost of the O2 canister and who maintains it?