Influenza-like illness

Specialties School

Published

Sent three home today with ILI - fever plus body aches/chills/cough/s/t. I've sent two others home this month. Does five make it a trend???

Flare, ASN, BSN

4,431 Posts

Specializes in school nursing, ortho, trauma.

according to my dept of health it's all relative to the size of your district and how close together the illnesses are to each other.

Specializes in School nursing.
according to my dept of health it's all relative to the size of your district and how close together the illnesses are to each other.

Truth. I called mine once to report 7 cases of the flu at my school, which seems like nothing in a school of 500, but we don't usually have that many confirmed cases of the flu the entire year, let alone the month I saw it in. They just told me to monitor.

ruby_jane, BSN, RN

3,142 Posts

Specializes in ICU/community health/school nursing.

I report daily to the health department...two teachers out as well.

WineRN

1,109 Posts

Specializes in NCSN.
I report daily to the health department...two teachers out as well.

I kinda wish we did. We have a GI bug going through my school but it's just spread out enough where we are just tracking it but I feel like it's going around the community I serve so they should know

BeckyESRN

1,263 Posts

I kinda wish we did. We have a GI bug going through my school but it's just spread out enough where we are just tracking it but I feel like it's going around the community I serve so they should know

We're dealing with a GI bug here too. It's awful.

Guests

Guest

0 Posts

My own son who is 12 missed yesterday and is home today. Fever since Sunday, chills, dry cough, body aches, took him in yesterday and strep and flu tests negative. They said they have seen a lot of this in the past two weeks. I have had a few students at my own school where I practice.

KKEGS, MSN, RN

723 Posts

Specializes in School Nursing.

Our threshold is 5% of the school, 5% in one grade level or 3 in one classroom. One of our schools filed a report with our state DoH yesterday. We had 28 students out with ILI and 4 in 1 single classroom. Our school wide threshold for that particular school is 25. We have another school that is very close to meeting the threshold so for now we are just monitoring. I heard on the news that this year's flu vaccine is only 10% effective. :( Kind of glad I didn't force my needlephobe 9 year old to get it.

KKEGS, MSN, RN

723 Posts

Specializes in School Nursing.
I kinda wish we did. We have a GI bug going through my school but it's just spread out enough where we are just tracking it but I feel like it's going around the community I serve so they should know

We notify our county public health nurses if we see stuff like this because they want to know. They also keep us updated on what they are seeing in the whole county like the norovirus outbreak in restaurant workers they saw earlier in the fall.

Amethya

1,821 Posts

Specializes in Cardiology, School Nursing, General.

I had a lot of nausea, dizziness, headaches and cold-like symptoms today.

Eleven011

1,250 Posts

Specializes in Home Health,Dialysis, MDS, School Nurse.

I'm feeling rather dense at the moment.....but it has never occurred to me to report a run of illnesses to DOH?? It wasn't something I was told I needed to do in my 4 hour orientation:sarcastic:

But seriously, I've had up to 4 mono cases at once in our high school and half of a class out in elementary around flu season. I figured the doctors offices were keeping track of trends like that. Maybe I'll check into it.....

KKEGS, MSN, RN

723 Posts

Specializes in School Nursing.
I'm feeling rather dense at the moment.....but it has never occurred to me to report a run of illnesses to DOH?? It wasn't something I was told I needed to do in my 4 hour orientation:sarcastic:

But seriously, I've had up to 4 mono cases at once in our high school and half of a class out in elementary around flu season. I figured the doctors offices were keeping track of trends like that. Maybe I'll check into it.....

Your DOH should have a list of reportable illnesses on it's website somewhere. Our state's DOH has a whole separate School Health section of it's website where we get a lot of our information from.

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