Counselor dumping

[MountainRN, BSN]

Hello!  Today I took the temp of a student brought to me that was throwing a tantrum.  This is a baseline behavior for this student.  No fever so was escorted out by the para. The student was brought back by the counselor and coaxed into the office again 20 minutes later and counselor stated the student felt warm again.  Again, no fever. I explained to the counselor we do not call home for behavior issues and this is the student baseline and she just ignored me and left anyways.  The student proceeded to kick and scream for 30 minutes.  This caused two students to loose access to the health room for headache and a nose bleed and a we had to log and count controlled meds with a parent in the foyer.  This is not the first time this counselor has done this.    I understand ruling out fever but I feel we are being dumped on and it is impeding other students access and the normal health room processes.  She also has an office with sensory toys and a bean bag.  Anyone have this issue?

[k1p1ssk, BSN, RN]

Yikes! How inappropriate. If you have not already had a conversation with this counselor when you are both free of students, then that should be your first step. 

The conversation should focus on medical need vs. behavior (as you obviously have tried stating), privacy concerns for the student in question as well as other students seeking care, safety concerns, and access to care - since it is not a medical emergency, you should not be responsible for a single student who is having behaviors. What would you do if there was a true emergency elsewhere in the school while this was happening? 

Another thing to consider is going to the space where the student is to evaluate. Can be tough with privacy, but if they are going to need to transition the student out of the gen ED classroom, perhaps they can go to a private calm down space and you could do your eval there. This avoids an additional transition, which sounds like it might be a trigger for this student when they are escalated, and doesn't saddle you with them... If admin is scared of anything it's privacy violations and safety concerns.

If your conversation and/or suggestions don't pan out, then you bring it up the chain to your administrator - either your principal or special ED director. That conversations should also focus on the above points!