A fever...and no answer at home!

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Specializes in Med Office, Home Health, School Nurse.

i have a very sick 5 year old kiddo in my office...he's running a temp of 102 and chilling like crazy. i have two numbers on his info sheet...no answer at the home number (left a msg to pls call) and the other has been disconnected...what to do now???

usually in these situations i have more than one working number or they call me back fairly quickly...his bus will leave in just over an hour, i guess i will have to put him on the bus if i haven't heard anything, but he's feeling so crummy. my heart goes out to him! he's attempting to take a nap on the cot right now. i wish someone would hurry and call me back!

any other suggestions???

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Specializes in School Nursing.

man....bus drivers hate when we put a sick kid on the bus. i have had our deputy go to the house before and low and behold....the parent was there ! they tell them to get to the school pronto !

you will only need to do this once, then it never happens again ! they will get you a dozen emergency numbers then...

good luck. i too, feel bad for the kid. watch...he will be back in school tomorrow !! :uhoh3:

praiser :heartbeat

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Specializes in Med Office, Home Health, School Nurse.

It's so close to the end of the day now, the deputy wouldn't get there before school was out...I just tried the number again--no answer....

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Specializes in school nursing, ortho, trauma.

We require at least 2 emergency contacts in addition to parents home work and cell numbers. But despite all that, i've still been there. Sometimes thats all you can do.

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Specializes in Med Office, Home Health, School Nurse.

His teacher just stopped by to get him from the clinic to put him on the bus....poor little guy looks like he's about to fall over. I hate situations like this. He's sick as can be and now he's going to be on a bus for at least 30 minutes...

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Specializes in School Nurse, Maternal Newborn.

I would NOT have put him on the bus. It exposes all the other kids, and if the kid vomits, the bus driver gets to clean it up. Also, the driver has 40+ other kids to worry about, and this will just add to the difficulties they face in trying to safely drive. I would have kept the child, and when the child was not at the bus stop, the parents would call the school. It would make it necessary to stay over, but a 1/2 hour ride for a very ill 5 year old is just too much. I wouldn't LIKE it, but is often par for the course in this sort of situation.

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In my district, we would put him on the bus, too, unless the principal said otherwise. I take it this student does not have older siblings in the school? Sometimes older siblings know how to reach mom/dad/grandparent, etc. So many of our parents have no transportation (or so they say) and we are fortunate when a parent actually does show up to fetch a sick child. What really bothers me is parents who send a sick child to school in the morning, KNOWING THE CHILD IS ILL..."yes, he was running a fever this morning" or "yeah, he puked a little bit when he got up this morning"...and these are not necessarily parents who are working outside the home and can't take the day off to care for sick wee ones at home...:uhoh3:

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Specializes in OB/GYN, Peds, School Nurse, DD.
We require at least 2 emergency contacts in addition to parents home work and cell numbers. But despite all that, i've still been there. Sometimes thats all you can do.

Me too. I work in a small school. Our population is very poor. Their phones are constantly disconnected or changed, but parents forget to give us the new numbers. The kids don't know their parents' numbers,some don't know their last names.:eek: In my last school we had a social worker and a police precinct(that should give you a clue :uhoh3:) If it was an emergency and I couldn't reach parents(and assuming we didn't need 911) the SW or police would go out to the house,where 99% of the time there was at least one parent available. Our policy was any child with a fever of 104 or higher had to go home within 15 minutes or 911 had to be called. Never had to do that, but it was close a few times.

I have had a few instances of not being able to find anyone to pick up a child with a low-moderate fever. They're not sick enough to call 911, but they're too miserable to be in class. Plus, the teacher REALLY don't want them back. My clinic is about the size of my bathroom--about 8' x6'. I have one cot and 1 chair. I'll give the child time to rest for a bit while I try to get parents, but if I still can't get them in an hour and the kid isn't vomiting, they have to go. I simply don't have room. Last week, we had the vomit fairy visit. I sent home 9 kids in 4 hours. At one point I had 4 kids lined up on benches in the hall, each with their own bucket. It was like Yellowstone--one would go and they'd all erupt. :clown: Made for an interesting day.

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Specializes in OB/GYN, Peds, School Nurse, DD.
I would NOT have put him on the bus. It exposes all the other kids, and if the kid vomits, the bus driver gets to clean it up. Also, the driver has 40+ other kids to worry about, and this will just add to the difficulties they face in trying to safely drive. I would have kept the child, and when the child was not at the bus stop, the parents would call the school. It would make it necessary to stay over, but a 1/2 hour ride for a very ill 5 year old is just too much. I wouldn't LIKE it, but is often par for the course in this sort of situation.

That sounds great, but it would be hard to put into practice in my area. A lot of our kids are latchkey kids. If they don't get off the bus, nobody knows it until 7pm or later. Sad, isn't it? They're just little kids, too, K-5. Some of them have HS age brothers or sisters, but they don't have the sense God gave a gnat. MOst of these kids, it wouldn't even occur to them to call the school OR their parents. They would assume their little brother just went over to a friends' house. Then, back to their regularly scheduled Call of Duty.:rolleyes:

Oh well, we can't fix everything. I try to use CPS judiciously, just for those situations that really cry out for it. I can't make parents do their jobs. I really fear for this generation. Nobody is parenting them, how in the heck are they going to learn to be parents and good citizens?

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A fever of 102 with chills for a 5 year old child who clinically feeling very ill. Too scary to put that child on a school bus. That is a situation where I would ask the principal to drive the child home and if no one there, go on to the ER. A 30 minute ride, what if the fever escalates and the child seizes? Not fair to the child, the bus driver and not fair to the other children.

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Let us know how that little boy is doing - thanks!

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Specializes in Med Office, Home Health, School Nurse.

In my district, I had no other choice. I sent a note home with him and put him on the bus. I would have driven him home myself, but that would have put me directly responsible if I had had a car accident or something. I haven't heard from his parents, so I'm assuming they weren't too concerned. He didn't start feeling bad until around 2:00 in the afternoon, so it's possible that Mom and Dad just weren't home when I called. By the time I had called the resource office and he had gotten away to drive down there, school would have been out and the kid would be halfway home on the bus. It's a lose lose situation, but I had no other choice.

I feel bad that he was so sick and stuff, but he hadn't vomited or had any other symptoms, so I let him sleep til the end of school and then he went with his teacher to get on the bus.

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