Boarding - two 16yr old girls going to Paris in a party via train with 18 boys. Usual result is 16 disappointed boys, and two distraught girls.
Girl A is going out with Boy A who is celebrating his 18th. Girl B is best friend of Girl A, and this will be her first trip away.
My role - nurse, but also parent in 'loco-parentis'
I know students very well. I know the hurt that often happens on trip. I know parents usually have no idea what goes on during such trips. These trips happen every year, and I'm left to pick up the pieces, whether it be intoxicated/drugged kid in ICU, head injury, or some other nasty surprise.
I call parents of girl A to make sure they are aware daughter is with 18 boys. Rationale, I'm a parent and I know my father would never have let my sister go on such a trip. Also figuring out my role as i'm considered a nurse and a parent.
What do I do, - I call father of girl A who gets angry, tells me off, says he trusts his daughter. Due to the angry reaction, I don't call the parents of Girl B
Result - girl B and girl A are in my office on monday morning, trying to figure out if girl B has been raped.
Boyfriend of girl A had a best friend who booked a room in hotel forhimself as well as girl B, and girl B felt she had to share a room/bed with him because she had left the booking up to the boys, and along with alcohol, eventually consented, but now not so sure.
It's not always easy figuring out what the best thing too do.
I get frustrated at first because people don't see the dilemma I'm trying to show, then realise I should have added more detail to the scenario, so it is my own fault.
In this case, I don't see it so much about 'sex' as someone said, but about brining your values/beliefs into your practice, and how they influence (or not) your actions.
Yes, i did feel guilty when the girls were crying in my office. I kept thinking how my dad would never had let my big sister go on a trip with a group of boys at that age, especially for a weekend trip. And yes, generally it's always the girls I see suffer, or end up the victim, and I do worry, because my oldest child is near their age, and it's frightening. I realise I sometimes do things meaning the best, but then I don't know.
Okay, so perhaps a change in wording would help you in the future. Remember in purely written communication, there is lack of tone and inflection, in addition to delayed response. When you start a thread like this, you need to share the story minus your moral perception of it. I appreciate you genuinely feel like you are protecting these youths.
It sounds like (in this case), you are genuinely looking out for them. Remember, as a prior post just stated, boys can be victims, too, and perhaps contacting ALL of the parents wouldn't be a bad idea. I think that's where I'd go with all of this. Leave out issues of gender because this has nothing to do with gender right now. Both genders can be victimized by both genders equally. (As in, male on male, and female on female, are also possible.)
Also, as the one adult on these trips, you need to decide if you are putting your own butt on the line by attending. I hate to say it, but if you are, in fact, going on these weekends with the youths, you can get in a WORLD of trouble yourself just by being there. You need to protect yourself, too. Bring more adults with you (of both genders) if you feel your continued presence is necessary.
Nope, but some points to mention - it's even in the school guidelines and the real parents are told that we are parents to these kids. As for being emotionally involved, don't nurses, to some degree, share the happiness and sadness of their patients. It's also pretty hard to be immune when you're dealing with horrible events. But you learn to draw boundaries, you learn to balance nursing with discipline issues with the kids - such as a child who get caught lying to you about being sick, then gets caught out. But when you live and work with your charges, things are different. Even my own children are friends with some of the children, and the people in charge of the dorms are even called parents. Boarding schools are proud of truly calling their staff parents to the kids. It really is a unique environment.
A common scenario where the boundaries are weird, is smoking. I'm the one who does the smoking education, and they come to me to talk about ways to stop it, yet when I catch them smoking out of class, it's an automatic discipline offense. What I've discovered works in these cases, is giving them a chance, instead of an automatic punishment. Other staff members don't give them a chance, and it's automatic detention and parents contacted. Whereas, just last year, I caught a Saudi boy smoking, and after a talk, he promised to stop, as he'd just taken it up. I warned if he got caught again, it would be treated as a straight forward discipline issue. He's never smoked again, and when he graduated this year, he thanked me for the chance. This doesn't always work, but it shows that things aren't always black and white.
I'm with Red on this one, OP. You may be losing sight of boundaries here. I imagine the school states that employees are substitute parents to create warm and fuzzy feelings for the parents who feel guilty sending their kids off to boarding school. On one hand, yes, there is a clear duty to protect. On the other, this is not a place for morals. It sounds like you have a situation that requires clear policies put forward by the school.
If there aren't policies here already, THERE NEED TO BE. Advocate for these kids not by becoming overly involved and soft, but by creating a dialog with school administration to address this. THE SCHOOL (not you) fails these kids and these parents by not placing boundaries and expectations on these trips. If I trusted a school with my child's safety, I would be furious to find out about these weekends.
We are, as nurses, allowed to have feelings and personal values/morals. However, policy and respect for autonomy make lines clear. So advocate for creation of policy. Allow your own belief system be heard during the creation of policy because, after all, policy can be born of beliefs. Beliefs are where these things begin. But once the policy is in place, you know you have a resource for answering these questions and you have rules to enforce with the students.
All that said, I caution against being emotional when you bring this to administration because they will see, as we do, that you may be more emotionally involved than is appropriate.
I hope I am addressing the concerns you are having. I think under the troll vibe, you actually are wanting real help. If you're actually trolling and I'm taking the bait, you suck. lol
I think there are a lot of cultural differences here that we can't help you with (we being defined as Americans who mostly have no knowledge of boarding schools).
In my mind, I'm wondering:
1) Why do you assume 18 boys and 2 girls always have problems? Are all the males you know oversexed idiots who prey on women? Are all the females you know powerless and vulnerable and unable to act appropriately around males?
2) Was there a chaperone? I couldn't understand half of what you posted and still don't know what the heck actually happened.
3) Two lucky guys and two distraught girls? What do you mean? Two rapists and two victims? Two guys who got laid and two girls who gave in but didn't want to? Two girls who are emotionally disturbed by just being outnumbered by males? Just say stuff factually, please, without all the sensationalism, for clarity. I can interpret the heck out of what you are saying, but judging from other bizarre threads you've started, I will be wrong 99.9% of the time.
4) What happened, again?
5) You have expressed contempt and outrage at the opinions of the membership here a few times, so why do you keep posting this weird stuff? And why is it always about sex/Media and female vulnerability? Are you a predator yourself? Are you acquainted with one? Are you around survivors who aren't coping? There are some seriously weird dynamics going on here.
It's not a school sanctioned trip, it's parents signing their children away for the weekend, then the parents not being there, then the children getting in trouble. No adults, no chaperone, 5 star hotels, nightclubs, champagne and plenty of cash.
Now, males can be victims. But in 10yrs of doing this job, it's always the girls that I've seen hurt. The thing is, boys+alcohol are a risky combination. And yes, I have seen women's attitudes change a little and they are more aggressive in chasing boys. But the boys aren't bad, they're teenagers, some who've often spent their life, from as young as 5 in boarding school, and you combine alcohol, hormones, and no adults to provide supervision, and it's guaranteed to have casualties - and not because anyone is bad, but because they're kids playing at being adults. In an ideal, non biased world, 18 boys and 2 girls is nothing to worry about - yet time and time again, it's the girls get hurt. I'm working with the real consequences of it. Should I lie and be PC or be practical?
I think education, presented in a non-judgmental way, geared toward the parents would be good. Maybe send a note home basically saying, "dear parents, I am the school nurse and I've recently been made aware of x, y, z occurring on weekends when large groups of the high school students leave campus together. In an effort to help promote the safety of these students, I hope to open a dialog about these activities. If you are interested, I would like to invite you to an event on xyz date. If you are unable to attend, I would still like to encourage you to discuss these trips with your high schooler. I am available to discuss these things with you at any time."
It sounds to me that the parents don't recognize the behaviors these kids are engaging in. We all know what teens do, of course, but I do think, as a parent, I'd want to know there is a situation so that I could talk to my kids, and so that I could know the school is paying attention enough to reach out.
Hmmm, not a bad idea, but I'm not sure my sense of humor and style of writing would go down well in America.
Another thing, please use the quote function so we know who you're replying to. This came out of nowhere. Combine this with your vagueness and strange posts and now I'm too frustrated trying to figure out what you mean to even participate anymore.
Red Kryptonite
2,212 Posts
I thought that was weird too. Maybe what we're seeing from OP is a nurse that has lost his professional boundaries and gotten emotionally involved?