Minor Questions

[moreoreo]

If there is already something like this, please let me know, but I thought there could be a thread for minor questions that we would feel silly to start an entire topic for. I know there are a lot of newbie school nurses who cling to this forum so I thought it might be a nice spot for our side concerns.

An example: do you have your students clean their inhalers after each use? In the hospital, not a single one of my patients EVER did this. None of the students seem especially inclined to do it except for one who does it every time with a tissue.

[WineRN]

Situation:

I had a special needs student brought to me because they noticed he was chomping on something that was plastic during class. No one could ID what it was and the student was fighting them when they tried to get him to spit it out so they rushed to my office. I tried to spray some water in his mouth but that caused him to swallow so the para ended up holding his arms down so I could get his mouth open to start scraping his tongue with a tongue blade. He actually like it and stopped fighting pretty quickly so I got a lot out but I know he swallowed some. I called home and his parents said that he does that when he is angry and didn't seem to care.

Question

How do you get a tiny one to open their mouth?!

[moreoreo]

Situation:

I had a special needs student brought to me because they noticed he was chomping on something that was plastic during class. No one could ID what it was and the student was fighting them when they tried to get him to spit it out so they rushed to my office. I tried to spray some water in his mouth but that caused him to swallow so the para ended up holding his arms down so I could get his mouth open to start scraping his tongue with a tongue blade. He actually like it and stopped fighting pretty quickly so I got a lot out but I know he swallowed some. I called home and his parents said that he does that when he is angry and didn't seem to care.

Question

How do you get a tiny one to open their mouth?!

Pinch their nose? I know that is an old school technique and maybe not the safest so I'm curious to hear other ideas!

[SaltineQueen]

When I was researching software I really wanted the free systems to be viable, but I found that should you need them for litigation there could be problems. I would assume being a legal team, they covered those bases.

Tell me more, please...

[Feral.Cat.Herder, RN]

We use CareDox, which I believe is free. I don't know all the in & outs, but I believe they do get non identifiable data from us. Some people really poo-poo CareDox because of that, but they are fully HIPAA & FERPA compliant. Our legal team did a review of their services before we started using CD & is confident in that.

Do you know if Caredox takes insurance?

[Kittery]

Question: I was doing Diastat training today, and I always tell the teacher to look at the safety cap and make sure that little plastic prong is still there, otherwise it probably broke off in the syringe. But if it did ... what would happen? I'm thinking it would just get pushed out with the medicine and there are worse things that could get stuck in a kid's butt (pardon me for whatever image pops into your head here. ) But I suppose it could also injure the skin! I usually only have one syringe per kiddo so wouldn't be able to try a 2nd one. Thoughts?