Bathroom accidents...

Nope - Majority of time kids clean themselves and/or I call a parent to come do it.

I have a pants pooper. We work as a team with his counselor, a "preventionist", a therapist that sees him at school, his intervention specialist, and his teachers. It becomes my duty to attend to this because it involves a bodily excretion.

Poop, nosebleeds, periods, urine, sweat, blood all come to me, no matter the cause, quantity, or severity.

Although I do not actually clean any accidents. I call home, parent comes to clean up/student takes care of themselves.

I have cleaned up a pooper before. We actually have one student with delays who still wears pull ups. His para usually takes care of him, but if she's not here & the sub isn't comfortable it comes to me. We had a K student this year who was pooping himself & couldn't/wouldn't clean himself up. I'm not going to have a kid sit in poop waiting for parents, so I helped him, with a witness. We talked to parents about it & they ended up pulling him because, for other reasons too, he just wasn't ready for kindergarten.

Kids that pee themselves come to me because I'm the keeper of the clothes.

There is one boy who had to come use my bathroom in kindergarten because he was purosefully peeing all over the bathroom in his classroom because he was mad. Same child, now a bit older, was found to have smeared feces on bathroom stalls upstairs. If there's another incident like that I'm guessing he'll be made to come down here again.

So maybe not a nursing issue, but in a school who else is going to deal with it?

This is me too.

Same here.

So maybe not a nursing issue, but in a school who else is going to deal with it?

This is how I feel too.

My complaint is the fact that even if we all know the issue is avoidance, we need to "exhaust all medical options first". And in my experience, the parents know it's not a medical issue, so don't want to take their little one to the doctor. Then we are stuck in this awful place where the child is still wetting themselves, getting to miss class and we can't put any stricter behavior plans in place because it "might be medical". As the medical professional, and the person dealing with this issue, I wish that my professional judgement could help us move the process along.

Not a medical issue! The post said they werent talking about sick or chronic problems. Just kids that truthfully are able to go on their own just dont because of behavior and such. So no things like that do not come to the nurse. If there is a true medical reason then yes I am happy to assist but behavior problems are a no go. Thankfully my admin are with me on this one. The teacher calls the parent and the child takes some wipes in the bathroom and cleans themselves up. If its a behavior issue then the principle needs to get involved. But its crazy how many teachers have tried to push this off on the nurses.

Somewhat yes, but that's only if the student doesn't have any clothes in their bags that day and I need to call their parents.

I don't clean them or anything like that, that's where I draw the line.

I am so blessed to have teachers who deal with this. Three years and only once have I dealt with it.

... are they really a nursing issue?

No. Not a nursing issue.

But the small print somewhere apparently says "If it is unpleasant, the nurse should deal with it"

The way I see it, if it involves a bodily fluid, it's clearly a nurse thing because we deal with body fluids. Now, with that being said, I fully expected to have all the potty accidents come to me this year when we added Kinder-2nd to our melting pot but NOPE!!! Imagine my surprise (and my admin assistant's!) when I said "I'm surprised we don't have any accidents here. I'm really impressed!". Turns out they've just been handling them without my help! WOOT WOOT!! Not sure how I dodged that bullet, but I'm not gonna rock the boat on it

Side note: if I learned anything from my hospital days, its that I will touch just about anything as long as I have gloves on!!