FERPA violation?

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When I first started school nursing, we made a list of kids who had medical conditions and gave the list to the appropriate teacher. About 2 years after I started, I was told it was a FERPA violation. I obviously stopped sending lists after that. Is this actually a violation? If so, how do you notify your teachers of medical conditions? They have access to the medical alerts in e-school but most of my teachers do not check these. How do you notify your teachers?

Specializes in school nursing, ortho, trauma.

I input the health concerns into realtime so that the teachers can see pertinent info. There is an option of confidential, which i've begun using for notes that i should keep in mind - meds given at home and so on. It is up to the teacher to then make their classroom alert list so that paras and subs know what's up.

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Specializes in Peds, School Nurse, clinical instructor.

I do not hand out lists. All of the allergies and med alerts are in E-school. I remind my teachers at the beginning of the year to check their students alerts.

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Specializes in School Nurse, past Med Surge.

I meet with classroom teachers and discuss their specific students. We use PowerSchool and there is a medical indicator next to the student's name. As new students come in I either email, call, or meet with them again. But I only have 15 teachers. I email the complete list to specials teachers, the principal, the office staff (they are my backup), and anyone trained in CPI. They all have a legitimate need to know. I was under the understanding that printed lists were a no-no but emails to specific people were acceptable.

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Specializes in Peds, School Nurse, clinical instructor.

We are now being told no student specific info in emails unless encrypted. They are worried about people hacking into our system. This makes things much more difficult in terms of quick, accurate communication.

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Specializes in School Nursing.
1 hour ago, bsyrn said:

I do not hand out lists. All of the allergies and med alerts are in E-school. I remind my teachers at the beginning of the year to check their students alerts.

My teachers are not doing this. The principal is upset because I said I wouldn't send a list. We've had numerous incidents where a student had a seizure, asthma attack etc and the teacher says, "No one ever told me!"... even though I've sent out many e-mails regarding health alerts. I even sent screen shots on how to look at a health alert.

14 minutes ago, SaltineQueen said:

I meet with classroom teachers and discuss their specific students. We use PowerSchool and there is a medical indicator next to the student's name. As new students come in I either email, call, or meet with them again. But I only have 15 teachers. I email the complete list to specials teachers, the principal, the office staff (they are my backup), and anyone trained in CPI. They all have a legitimate need to know. I was under the understanding that printed lists were a no-no but emails to specific people were acceptable.

Meeting with teachers is just not possible for me. It would probably take me the entire semester (not exaggerating). Next year, I'll have two additional schools. I need to figure this out now before I'm 150% overwhelmed :(. I would love if I could e-mail lists. I contacted an attorney for further guidance.

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Specializes in School Nursing.

I spoke with our district's attorney. He said it is not a violation. Yay! Makes my life a lot easier. Thanks for all of the input ?

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Specializes in School Nursing.
22 minutes ago, SchoolNurse91 said:

I spoke with our district's attorney. He said it is not a violation. Yay! Makes my life a lot easier. Thanks for all of the input ?

Yay! I'm glad you got more clarification! As a nurse with multiple buildings and probably 70 teachers, I could not imagine meeting 1-1 with them about health concerns. I felt your pain!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Emergency Room, School Nurse.

What I do is have a master list of students with Allergies and Medical needs.

Because we are small school and only have about 40 total between faculty and staff, they are sent out the basic information as we all interact with the students. The teachers however are responsible to input the information in to their sub plans. I am pretty fortunate when it comes to our teachers about 85% of them actually read their emails and stay up to date when it comes to the need to know information.

Parents on the other hand that is a whole other story. I have about 65% (and that is a big if) that actually provide the medical information. I just recently found out that a student has an active mediport and that is only because they have the tubing hanging out of the top of their shirt for everyone to see. Another case was that another student has heart problems (born with WPW), the parent didn't feel that I needed to know until the student had to go to the ER for chest pain and heart palpations and came to school with a heart monitor asking if I could look at it to ensure that the batteries were placed right. That was about 2 weeks after it was placed.

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23 hours ago, SchoolNurse91 said:

My teachers are not doing this. The principal is upset because I said I wouldn't send a list. We've had numerous incidents where a student had a seizure, asthma attack etc and the teacher says, "No one ever told me!"... even though I've sent out many e-mails regarding health alerts. I even sent screen shots on how to look at a health alert.

This is disturbing. Your administration needs to be involved with any teacher who refuses to check allergy & med alerts. This is a major liability. It's a click of a few buttons. Who is to say they're going to look at your list if they're unwilling to click a couple times to make sure they're aware of major health conditions and things that could kill their students? I can't imagine my staff being unaware of which students have major health conditions like epilepsy.

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Specializes in School Nursing.
On 2/26/2020 at 9:11 AM, msilcox said:

What I do is have a master list of students with Allergies and Medical needs.

Because we are small school and only have about 40 total between faculty and staff, they are sent out the basic information as we all interact with the students. The teachers however are responsible to input the information in to their sub plans. I am pretty fortunate when it comes to our teachers about 85% of them actually read their emails and stay up to date when it comes to the need to know information.

Parents on the other hand that is a whole other story. I have about 65% (and that is a big if) that actually provide the medical information. I just recently found out that a student has an active mediport and that is only because they have the tubing hanging out of the top of their shirt for everyone to see. Another case was that another student has heart problems (born with WPW), the parent didn't feel that I needed to know until the student had to go to the ER for chest pain and heart palpations and came to school with a heart monitor asking if I could look at it to ensure that the batteries were placed right. That was about 2 weeks after it was placed.

I had a student get hit in the face with a basketball. When I was assessing her, she was bruising excessively. I called mom and just asked "Hey, this may seem like a silly questions, but has little sally ever been tested for a bleeding disorder?" "Yeah! She has hemophilia."

WHAT?! The parents happened to be out of the country on vacation. Grandma had no clue how to treat. It was a whole mess.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Emergency Room, School Nurse.
On 2/26/2020 at 10:43 AM, SchoolNurse91 said:

I had a student get hit in the face with a basketball. When I was assessing her, she was bruising excessively. I called mom and just asked "Hey, this may seem like a silly questions, but has little sally ever been tested for a bleeding disorder?" "Yeah! She has hemophilia."

WHAT?! The parents happened to be out of the country on vacation. Grandma had no clue how to treat. It was a whole mess.

This is my fear that something is going to happen to student and we have no medical information on them because the parent cannot be bothered to input the information. This is a requirement when they set up either account, but sadly it never seems to be completed.

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Specializes in School Nurse, past Med Surge.
On 2/26/2020 at 10:43 AM, SchoolNurse91 said:

I had a student get hit in the face with a basketball. When I was assessing her, she was bruising excessively. I called mom and just asked "Hey, this may seem like a silly questions, but has little sally ever been tested for a bleeding disorder?" "Yeah! She has hemophilia."

WHAT?! The parents happened to be out of the country on vacation. Grandma had no clue how to treat. It was a whole mess.

And they didn't think that was important to tell you?!?!?!?!?

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