Good afternoon peeps- I am just reaching out to see if there are any School Nurses on here from Missouri that will be performing the BinaxNOW Rapid tests in their schools.
I also want to hear from you if your schools didn't decide to participate and what the rationale was for that?
For those that will be doing the Testing- How are you feeling about the process, as we are preparing to start testing soon?
So thankful for the training and support that we are receiving to get ready to start the Testing process.
I am in TX, and received an email about this yesterday. It would appear that we will be doing it here, too. It seems like a good idea, but my concerns (like other previous comments) would be parents sending sick students to school just to be tested, staff members wanting to be tested frequently, and the additional time that testing will take up during the day. Contact tracing is already taking so much of my time this year that I rarely get to talk to the students who come to the clinic for visits. My assistants are handling most of those.
If the test takes 15 minutes to develop, and we have multiple students requesting a test at the same time, I don't have room for them.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens...
You'd be right about that. My district is piloting this program as I type this. Lots of unknowns still up in the air.
Our district nurse discussed it with our central office recently. I haven't heard back just yet but it seemed like the nurses weren't totally on board.
Yep, similar set up here in MA. But my thought process is my entire day will just me running COVID test after COVID test. My school doc would need to write the order (But also thinks this test is a way better surveillance tool vs symptomatic and that yes, every parent will send their sick child in to be tested and therefore "cleared.")
But I want to be wrong and am curious how it goes for you!
I am in the process of setting up a weekly surveillance PCR test using EMS to administer with a turnaround rate of 24 hours. I'm not ready to do both just yet :).
Just a thought, if you have standing orders, can you do what we do in LTC and use a telephone order form? Just send a batch everyday to provider?
Binax must be getting plenty of government money to send this to so many states. They said in the meeting that their high negativity or positivity rate is for SYMPTOMATIC people. Yet it seems as if my district wants to test asymptomatic staff when this is not this test's best result pool.
Testing asymptomatic adults is wasting my very precious time.
I don't mind testing the very, very few symptomatics though.
Binax must be getting plenty of government money to send this to so many states. They said in the meeting that their high negativity or positivity rate is for SYMPTOMATIC people. Yet it seems as if my district wants to test asymptomatic staff when this is not this test's best result pool.
Testing asymptomatic adults is wasting my very precious time.
I don't mind testing the very, very few symptomatics though.
In MA we can only use for testing of symptomatic folks. The data out there for antigen tests is finding they are pretty accurate for symptomatic folks since they need more viral load to be present to detect it.
MA still wants every antigen test confirmed with a PCR as well. Yet is piloting Binax at 100 schools in January. I'm curious to see if change the guidance re: PCR testing.
Specializes in School Nurse. Having conversations with littles..
18 hours ago, tining said:
My thoughts:
Binax must be getting plenty of government money to send this to so many states. They said in the meeting that their high negativity or positivity rate is for SYMPTOMATIC people. Yet it seems as if my district wants to test asymptomatic staff when this is not this test's best result pool.
Testing asymptomatic adults is wasting my very precious time.
I don't mind testing the very, very few symptomatics though.
I am so sorry to hear this. This is strictly against the guidance and the standing order in Missouri. If I were you, I wouldn't do one more test on an asymptomatic person. Call your LPHA and ask them to speak to your admin, or whoever is advising you to test asymptomatic people.
Specializes in School Nurse. Having conversations with littles..
To add a little tidbit- I have been advised by my LPHA that from their experience of interviewing hundreds of COVID positive people- that the loss of taste and smell is generally a later symptom. So, they wanted me to have my staff that had this symptom- to get a PCR test to make sure- if the antigen test is negative.
I have done a few tests. So far, it is actually kind of fun to get to do. Certainly a change in the norm. And, more importantly provides a great tool to help the school. I haven't tested any students, and I hope to primarily test staff members.
The difficult part, is actually the reporting on the state data base. But, I have been able to navigate that successfully on my first attempt.
CanIcallmymom, BSN, RN
397 Posts
Please let us know and keep us updated on how it's going. I hear it's coming down the pipe here in North Texas...