Mickey

This is for Jenthenurse. What conference is this? The ones in my area do not have such knowledgeable speakers!

When a student says " The teacher says to just give me an ice pack!" I say "your teacher is asking me to be a bad nurse. Would she like it if I asked her to be a bad teacher?" I have also written on the note to the teacher that needing ice is a nursing decision that they should not be recommending since they are not a nurse. Don't really care if they do not like the comment. I do not offer them advice on teaching! I can't let them stay in office as a way to control their need for ice as that will not bother them to be our of class at all. A lot of the "I need an ice pack" is school avoidance, and teachers not standing their ground! If a teacher sends the student back for ice after I have said it was not needed, I take the student to the principal and tell them that student keeps coming back unnecessarily. Sometimes principal will get them back to class by encouraging hydration! For every "Injured Extremity" entry in Infinite Campus, I feel I have to tell all the things not wrong with the extremity. How do those of you who send kids back with ice plan to prove that the injury the student gets at home that night did not occur at school like the parent is saying it did? After all, they were in the nurse office, and they were given ice. A parent can say that you simply did not realize the extent of the injury that you gave ice for if you do not chart that there was no mark, no swelling, no problems with gait, no protruding bone, no tenderness to touch. etc. I would rather offend the child and parent, and only have to chart once that nothing was wrong with the extremity. Once the student knows I won't give ice for stupid and nonmedical reasons, they do not bother to come to me for those school avoidance reasons. And that is how it should be!

If they do not have to have a legitimate reason for ice, why don't we just put an ice pack machine in the hall that leads in from recess, and save nurse visits for legitimate purposes?

I have started trying to teach students about when they need an ice pack. Every time I hand out an ice pack for an "Injured Extremity" I feel I have to protect myself, and my district from lawsuits by charting all the things that are not wrong with that extremity. Otherwise, after school student could get hurt, and parents could say it happened at school. But if I charted that the extremity was essentially fine at school-- their lawsuit goes away. I work in a big district that some parents look at as having deep pockets. I have started telling student that their invisible injuries do not require and ice pack. Then I started telling them that muscle spasms are better fixed by being hydrated and giving them water to drink instead. Then I stick to my grounds because I do not want to be out of ice for the big injuries. I am thinking of revising a chart I saw a social worker wearing. The chart was for figuring out how big a problem was so that the student's reaction to it would not be bigger than the problem itself. I am going to revise it into a do I really need ice scale, and start to teach them that every fleeting pain cannot be treated with ice.