Organizing end of the year paperwork

[it'snotatumor]

Ok, so my title is pretty much anti-clickbait, but what papers (i.e health forms, Dr.'s notes, med administration forms, etc,) do you keep at the end of the year and how do you store them? Our district has no specific system in place currently and the nursing Director said that schools are supposed to keep all documents for their students until they reach the age of 26?!? It seems absurd to keep that amount of physical papers around and scanning everything into our software program would be incredibly tedious.

[Mango Juice]

I have worked at 2 schools and at both of them, the feeder elementary school sends their health records to the middle school, and the middle school sends them to the high school. Ultimately, the records end up in the central office and I do not know how long they are kept there.

[Supernrse01, BSN]

Do you send your files on to the next school as students progress through grades (i.e. does the middle school nurse send files to the junior high nurse?) or does each school nurse have a file on students while they are there? It just seems like a waste of time space, and resources.[/quote']

I am the nurse for the students from 3rd grade through their senior year, so the records are pretty familiar to me and I rarely have to pull them. They are basically just a filing system. Our students have one folder that starts with them in K and then just travels from school-to-school when they transition.

[OyWithThePoodles, RN]

The attendance secretary keeps the doctors notes/parent notes. I have all of the med orders, MARS, actions plans, weird notes from parents that may come back to bite you in the butt/etc.

I scan all of those in to their electronic medical record in our system so they can be easily viewed. It's actually a pretty quick process. Last year I had days to make up at the end of the year and scanned in everything for 9 schools, and it didn't take long at all. My MAC is awesome and will remember a kiddo, so if I scan in a page on one student, then move on to 20 others and find one random page on the first kiddo it will remember that student and file it in their file.

[guest83140]

I try to save pretty much Everything (that pertains to school related docs) and box it up since I'm at the HS. I clean out drawers, folders, binders and box them. I keep email folders until the next year.

[NutmeggeRN, BSN]

I am the last stop for most. So when I get the files, I clean out all the duplicate immunizations and letters and permission slips from 1st grade!! If the immunizations have other data, I keep them. When I clean out, there is usally a foot high pile of paper ready for shredding