Over Night Field Trip

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Hello Nurses!

I am in need of assistance. I work at a private school for children with learning issues. The entire school goes on a field trip in March. I will be responsible for handling all medications. Including medications parents would normally give at times other than school hours.

Has anyone done this before?

I am struggling with the documentation. The form the school had can easily become a paragraph of confusion. With medications, I don't want any confusion. Any guidance would be amazing. Thank you!

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

I would suggest that you pose this question to the School Nurse forum - under the "Specialties" tab.

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Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
I would suggest that you pose this question to the School Nurse forum - under the "Specialties" tab.
Good suggestion...thanks. We moved this thread to the School Nursing forum to elicit more feedback from our members who work as school nurses.
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Thank you for the suggestion and help!

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Specializes in school nursing, ortho, trauma.

We take one grade on an overnight trip and so it ends up that quite a few wind up needing their home medications during that time and a lot need otc meds that i also need orders for as well.

So there are a few ways to go about it - you can work out whatever works best for you, but here are some points to consider or not:

1. consider the timing of your trip and have parents plan their morning meds for departure morning accordingly. I let them know that I can not unpack medications before we leave so there is no chance of me giving a ritalin at 7:30 am or even a dramamine before getting on the bus. this stuff will need to be figured out be the parent prior to departure.

2. If your school physician is amenable to it, consider getting a standing order for common meds like tylenol, mortin, and tums. It will save you from having to carry 25 tiny bottles and instead you can just have the parents opt in. No order to opt in, then tough walnuts.

3. I make it crystal clear to parents in a meeting that is held prior to the trip that no order - no medication. No if ands or buts. The order and medication is due in by a certain date and it's a hard cut off date. Not i'll bring it in Monday or can I just bring it the next day - NO - I have a lot of prep to do for this trip and if meds continue to trickle in they will not be accepted. If they are found the day of during bag search - they will be given back to the parent, if they are still there or locked in the office.

4. Remind them about proper containers. This becomes the time that parents try to drop of that one lonely ritalin in an unmarked baggie. Uhhh... no... for so many reasons.

I would imagine that on a whole school level the same things would apply just on a grander scale. Hope this helps.

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Specializes in School Nurse.

I would think that you need to get new doctor's orders for each of the students that you will be administering medication to.

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Specializes in School nursing.

Is the travel out of state? You may need to look into your role out of state; sometimes this is easy, sometimes it may require you get licensed in another state.

We have a field trip form for medications; given that each medication will be given for less then 10 days, no order is required as long as the medication comes in the original, fully labeled prescription bottle. (This sounds easy, but yet isn't enough to stop baggies of medication coming in).

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Specializes in IMC, school nursing.

What is your background? This will help to develop an organizational plan. I would prefer an MAR style format, with time blocks for efficiency. My school just requires prescription bottles and prn waivers, thankfully, not many (that I know of).

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Specializes in School Nursing.

I had to deal with this within the first few weeks of school and this is my first year as a school nurse! Luckily the nurse before me was super organized so I just copied what she did. We kept everything in a big 3 ring binder with divider tabs for each section: Health and Safety questionnaire filled out by parents for each child; Scheduled Meds; PRN Meds; Emergency Care Plans

We basically make up a MAR style page for each student with each medication listed and when it's due (AM, Lunch or PM/Bedtime) and space for the person giving the medication to initial when it is given. I make separate ones for scheduled meds and PRN meds. I put them all into a Master List divided into times as well so the teacher who takes responsibility for administering the meds can quickly look and see who needs meds at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

As for orders our district only requires a doctor's note if a med is to be given longer than 2 weeks. Since our big field trip only covers 2 nights I didn't have to deal with getting doctor's orders just a parent signed permission slip. We also do not have standing orders so anything a student may require or want to take such as Tylenol, allergy meds, Pepto Bismol, etc has to be provided by the parents. We ended up sending 2 computer paper boxes full of medications with the teachers.

I repeated over and over and over that I will NOT accept any meds the morning of the trip AND all meds must be in the original containers. Luckily no one dropped off baggies of pills but I know it's happened in the past.

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Wow! This is amazing help. I was a peds/Picu nurse previously. This is the first time my school has ever had a nurse. I have formatted my daily meds and prn meds in a MAR style. Its 150 students. So my anxiety for organization is crazy! Hahhaa! The field trip is in march, just attempting to get my paperwork in order to send home.

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