Field Trip Notification

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I have been in the school setting nearly 20 years. I have trouble with some of our teachers not notifiying me of field trips. Is this commom across the board?

Just the other day a specific group went on a field trip. I am calling several rooms looking for my daily med student and I found out he was on a trip. I notified his mom and she was ok with him missing his dose. But my problem is what if it was a rescue med?

How do you make sure the teachers are on board with notifying you about every field trip? Do you have a special form for the teachers to fill out or do you just rely on secretaries to notify you?

Specializes in School Health.

My bookkeeper lets myself and the secretaries know what field trips are planned as they are approved. They go on my calendar, my secretaries calendar and then our "parent calendar" that is at the front desk. We also do bimonthly parent newsletters home for the entire school with a calendar of upcoming events for the next 2 weeks.

Specializes in School Nurse, past Med Surge.

I've never had a problem knowing. Our secretary puts out a "what's going on in the school" type sheet every week, so they're on there. Plus, teachers usually email me, or even the whole school, to notify they'll be gone. I would ask your secretary to keep you in the loop because she should know about all of them.

This is the first time I've missed one of my kids going on a trip. It was track end of the year celebration. I am guessing some miscommunication between teacher and secretay. She always gives me a list of students so that I can double check to make sure no one needs anything.

Specializes in School Nurse.

We had a kerfluffle this spring of those that needed to know did not know. This was after I did a clinic expectation review after winter break.

Now the teachers have a form nurse & attendance clerk are required to sign.

The secretary checks form for signatures and they can go.

It's an ongoing problem here too. Our field trip approval sheets even have a checklist that starts with NOTIFY THE NURSE! They always check the box, but never actually notify anyone. I've found out about trips from facebook, ugh. Our office staff forwards the approved forms to me, but sometimes they don't even know about trips. I send out emails a during field trip season to remind teachers, but that's hit or miss too.

7 minutes ago, tining said:

We had a kerfluffle this spring of those that needed to know did not know. This was after I did a clinic expectation review after winter break.

Now the teachers have a form nurse & attendance clerk are required to sign.

The secretary checks form for signatures and they can go.

What type of form did you use?

Specializes in Home Health,Dialysis, MDS, School Nurse.

We get daily announcements and a weekly activities bulletin emailed to the entire school, so I'd have to actually try to miss one. The only ones I don't really hear about are the short, hour long ones, like PE class is going bowling, or Government class is going to the courthouse. But those usually don't cause too much trouble.

Specializes in Telemetry, Orthopedic, M Surg, School RN.

Yes, I have this issue at my school. I am often not notified of school trips in advance. I would find out maybe a couple of days before or same day of the trip which leaves me scrambling to prep.

Since I am at a small school, for next year I am requesting direct advanced notice (2 weeks) of approved school trips and 4 weeks for out of state trips.

I think this will help iron out preparation details so that most will be well aware and I will have more time.

Our school has a field trip protocol in place and one of the steps is that the lead chaperone must email the entire faculty with a list of the kids going, what time, etc. Other steps in the protocol are: first, getting the trip approved by principal, alerting the secretary who puts it on our online calendar, collecting permission slips, etc. My notification comes in the form of the mass email to all staff, and this is almost always sufficient.

There is ONE teacher who always forgets the mass email step and every time plays dumb about how I could not have known in advance. There is another teacher who chaperones a group of kids who actually set up the whole trip themselves (a recurring thing), so he is sometimes quite late with getting me names because the students are a bit disorganized. But other than that, no issues.

Specializes in Med-surg, school nursing..

This is a problem, you MUST be notified of field trips. In my school, the teachers used to forget until the morning of. So I got with admin and I am now on the forward list. When admin gets the okay from the bus garage, an email is sent to the teachers telling them they can go, I am cc'd on that email always, then I add it to my calendar. Try this.

Why am I always the last to know? Still trying to get teachers on board. Got notified yesterday about a whole grade field trip on Friday. 6 daily medications, 3 inhalers, 3 epi pens and an few non-inhaler asthma kids and a partridge in a pear tree or a bee allergy without an epi. Why don't they think this is important?

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