Balancing medical needs V educational needs

[mjmcca]

I am currently assigned as a 1:1 school nurse to a general Ed high school advanced freshmen. I have to frequently take him out of classes to administer treatments and medications. He misses large blocks of class time. What is my responsibility to his educational needs? I try and do whatever he needs done as efficiently as possible but even so I have to set up for the treatments and clean up afterwards which add time to whatever I doing. This in turn means longer time doubt of classes.His mother also keeps having the doctor add to his treatments which means more time out of instructional time. It makes no diffence to me if we spend the whole day in the health office but he is missing out on his education.

[Purple_Scrubs, BSN, RN]

Does he have a 504 plan? Perhaps this can be addressed within that. I am thinking they can schedule his classes around the major treatments...this seems like it would be a reasonable accomodation. Can any of the meds be given in class discretely? Of course, treatments probably cannot. Can the timing of treatments be adjusted to fall within break times?

As far as what is your responsibility, I would say since nurses advocate for their patients needs (medical, social, or otherwise), you should at least look into what can be done, since clearly it has become an issue for him. If he does not already have a 504 he needs one desperately, and if he has one and it has not been updated since the new treatments, it needs to be revised. Good luck, let us know what happens!