Gabriel Fernandez Docu-Series on Netflix

[jnemartin, BSN, RN]

It was painful to watch, but once I started I had to know what happened and I ended up binging the series this weekend. Anyone else see it? My thought throughout the whole thing was "Where is the school nurse?!" And regarding the teacher who called CPS to report the abuse 3+ times... did she do enough? I don't think so (just my opinion).

[CanIcallmymom, BSN, RN]

I wondered this as well after watching it. I feel like the school, as a whole, failed that poor child...but ultimately it is not their fault. If a student in my care came to me with the type of injuries that this child had with his teacher, I would have not only called CPS, but would have called 911. He needed immediate medical evaluation.

[CanIcallmymom, BSN, RN]

Oh, and to add. WHY was the teacher the only one making the report at the school? This is just an assumption on my part, based on the documentary, that only the teacher made the report. I have been told by counselors and administrators numerous times "you don't have to file a report, I already did." Welllll, that's nice and all, but I have pertinent info and just because you reported does not mean I am no longer a mandated reporter. That whole case was incredibly heartbreaking.

[jnemartin, BSN, RN]

I should add that I realize they might not have even had a school nurse... I guess my reaction was more centered around the school in general not doing enough. That boy looked horrible in his final weeks. They should not have let him return home until he was properly evaluated (medical and social) - and everyone in the school should have known that, as mandated reporters.

[lifelearningrn, BSN, RN]

I watched this over the weekend and it was disturbing to the core. The teacher made multiple phone calls to CPS. At one point, a CPS working blamed the teacher, saying something along the lines of, "If she knew how severe his abuse was, she shouldn't have let him leave her classroom"...

What more should she have done? Call the police?

[lifelearningrn, BSN, RN]

2 hours ago, jnemartin said:

I should add that I realize they might not have even had a school nurse... I guess my reaction was more centered around the school in general not doing enough. That boy looked horrible in his final weeks. They should not have let him return home until he was properly evaluated (medical and social) - and everyone in the school should have known that, as mandated reporters.

This was my thought too. At one point he'd missed 13 days, and when he returned he looked like he'd been tied to the back of a truck and dragged down the street. At that point, as a NURSE I'd have called 911 since there was NEVER a medical eval during this entire process.

Did the teacher do enough? In hindsight, definitely not. But the police didn't do enough. The family didn't do enough. NOBODY did enough.

[CanIcallmymom, BSN, RN]

7 minutes ago, lifelearningrn said:

Did the teacher do enough? In hindsight, definitely not. But the police didn't do enough. The family didn't do enough. NOBODY did enough.

Completely agree.

16 hours ago, lifelearningrn said:

What more should she have done? Call the police?

We actually called the police on a parent at my school a couple years ago. We filed with DCF and the child stated he was scared to return home. School was being dismissed in an hour so we called the police to come to the school. It was a bad situation but thankfully child was kept safe and removed.

[CanIcallmymom, BSN, RN]

26 minutes ago, MHDNURSE said:

We actually called the police on a parent at my school a couple years ago. We filed with DCF and the child stated he was scared to return home. School was being dismissed in an hour so we called the police to come to the school. It was a bad situation but thankfully child was kept safe and removed.

Yep, same with a student at my school last year. Called CPS. They escalated and said they would come to school. CPS was no show by 6pm (after admin turned away parents and family from pickup multiple times), so she was taken to the police station to await CPS.

[jnemartin, BSN, RN]

I know our school policy is that the child won't go home until the case is investigated by CPS. We had a situation last year, and the CPS worker arrived at school within about 2 hours of the call/report. Our backup plan was to either wait for the CPS worker if it was within a reasonable time, or call the police (from there, maybe have them transport him to the hospital or whatever they decided - the injuries were not serious in nature, but indicative of abuse).

[jnemartin, BSN, RN]

An update - I can tell a lot of teachers have also just watched this documentary because I have gotten a couple emails this week saying "so-and-so misses a lot of school, can you see what's up with that."

[nursex23, BSN, RN]

The teacher did mention that there was a school nurse. It may have been a non licenced person to assist with small health issues and that may explain why the "nurse" didn't do anything. At least that's what I'd like to think happened there and there wasn't an RN shrugged it off.

I really felt for that teacher. She wanted to do so much more but her principal didn't support her. I felt so bad at how she didn't really have any guidance on what to do. All of the teachers at my school are told not to call 911 until an administrator or the nurse is involved in the situation and agrees that 911 should be called. There may have been some kind of rule like this at that school and in this case the principal already said she did her part by reporting. All the more reason a nurse should be in every school. With the nature of those injuries, any nurse would have recognized that he needed to be removed from that home ASAP.