Had a first grader get sent to my office yesterday after walking under the monkey bars and subsequently catching a shoe to the face by the other kiddo swinging on said monkey bars. No s/s of injury were seen. PERLA was appropriate. Kiddo says their vision is a little blurry. Had them rinse their eyes out and I placed an icepack on it. Kiddo has icepack on their eye for 10 minutes and I reassess. No changes from initial assessment. Kiddo keeps rubbing their eye and says the blurriness is still there, but "just a little bit". Told kiddo to stop rubbing their eye and to rinse it out again but that I felt they were ok to return to class. Again, there were absolutely no signs of injury at all. Student denied any pain. Made sure to tell LD that if their eye wasn't better, or if it got worse, within a set time frame (i sent a note to the teacher with the time frame of 45 mins-1 hour) to make sure they came back so I could check them out again. Kiddo verbalizes agreement and takes note back to teacher. I don't see kiddo the rest of the day. Teacher says they never complained again.
Today I find out the parent called the teacher super mad yesterday about not being notified and now wants to speak to our principal about it. Now I'm second guessing everything I did yesterday and am stressing out about the whole situation.
Oh. And according to the student, (who has been in class all day with absolutely no complaints) they have an eye appointment today to make sure they haven't lost any vision in their eye.
Specializes in 25 years NICU 5 years Telephone Triage.
11 hours ago, OldDude said:
I realize today's litigious society has forced many telephone triage calls to end with "go to the ER." If we used those guidelines in school nursing we'd have to have a shuttle bus outside to shuffle the kids back and forth to the ER all day.
Schools have School Nurses to assess injuries based on the mechanism of injury, signs of injury, and symptoms reported. Based on Keeper's description of the injury and how the events of the day/evening unfolded this is simply a high strung parent who takes every opportunity to lash out when she thinks her kid has received some type of "insult;" whether physical or emotional.
Yep. I get a lot of calls from panicked parents who tell me “I just got a call from the school nurse!” Parents are ridiculous these days they are all helicopter parents
I am a nurse in telephone triage. Whenever a caller with a head injury has blurry vision, we send them to the ED to r/o concussion. Blurry vision is a symptom that needs to be evaluated same day, but not necessarily by an eye dr. more ED because they can do a CT scan if needed. that's our policy anyway. But you do have to be cautious with eye issues. He might have been rubbing his eye to try and clear his blurry vision.
I used to do telephone triage too,and it is so different when the child is right in front of you. Our protocol is for the student to stay in the clinic for about 30 minutes after the injury. Most of the time, the blurry vision with a blow to the eye clears up relatively quickly, but if it doesn't clear up, then I would call the parent and tell them what transpired and suggest an MD visit just to be cautious.
As much of a pain as this is, we have instituted for EVERY single head bump of any kind we call parents. There have been too many instances that have come back and "bit us". We also send a "bump on the head letter" home for every single one. I or a UAP can mark on the paper if we tried and could not reach parent as well. Most of the time these things are silly and minor, but when it isn't you have your bases with parents covered.
As much of a pain as this is, we have instituted for EVERY single head bump of any kind we call parents. There have been too many instances that have come back and "bit us". We also send a "bump on the head letter" home for every single one. I or a UAP can mark on the paper if we tried and could not reach parent as well. Most of the time these things are silly and minor, but when it isn't you have your bases with parents covered.
We do SCAT testing on every hit to the head. Print out the results and email them to parents and call.
ILoveHorsesRN, ADN
101 Posts
Yep. I get a lot of calls from panicked parents who tell me “I just got a call from the school nurse!” Parents are ridiculous these days they are all helicopter parents