HELP: Human bite protocol?

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Anyone have a protocol for human bites to students? I work for a private school and am writing protocols as I go along. I had a student come in today whose "hand accidently ended up getting cut with someone else's tooth." I washed the wound on the bitten student, dressed it, called home, sent student for immediate medical care. Had the biter come to my office, inspected for blood in his mouth, rinsed mouth, called his mom who is contacting his pediatrician. Anything else? These are high school students, btw.

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Specializes in School Nursing, Public Health, Home Care.

Funny you should ask, this just came up this week, except it was 4K students.

We have this covered in our blood borne pathogens policy. The NASN has a good guidebook for writing that policy, which I relied on heavily when writing ours.

Both parents were contacted and asked if their child had any infectious diseases, if the school could share their answer with the other parent and if they would accept the statement of the other parent regarding their child. If all goes well, everyone is agreeable and nothing else happens. If one party wants lab proof, then a whole other thing kicks in--in which a form is submitted to request lab work, in which the parent has the right to refuse lab work, in which the DA can force the lab work, etc.

We've never gone there but I imagine it to be a giant pain. This is all under the umbrella of your state laws, etc.

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The publication refered to in the previous post is:

Champion, C. (2005). Occupational Exposure to Blood-Borne Pathogens. Silver Spring, MD: NASN. http://www.nasn.org

https://portal.nasn.org/members_online/members/viewitem.asp?item=S010&catalog=MAN&pn=1&af=NASN

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NASN members download article free.

Conlon, H. A. (2007). Human bites in the classroom. Journal of School Nursing, 23, 197 - 201.

http://jsn.sagepub.com/content/23/4/197.abstract

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