"Thats the nurses job!"

Specialties School

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Friday was a mess more so than usual. We had a lot of teachers out due to many reasons but there was a certified teacher subbing in one of our self contained sped rooms. The assistant in there really cant deal with anything so I am always willing to help with whatever. I was at a different school doing mass vision and hearing screenings. She calls and says a student has a nose bleed. Well this student doesnt have nose bleeds he sticks his finger up his nose repeatly and makes it bleed. So essentially he just needed cleaning up. The teacher sub says "Oh no dont you touch that! That is the nurses job!" Umi no its actually your job dude. You are the teacher in the room. And any kind of bleeding that has stopped can be handled by soap and water and a bandage if needed in class! If it is actively bleeding and not controlled yes then I need to address it.

So next year when I cover blood borne pathogens for the 100th time I am going to add "I am not standing up here for my health. If you have a student bleeding you need to put on gloves and apply pressure, then help student clean up. This is why we cover this. I know how to deal with blood and body fluids. I am 1 person for 2000+ kids spread out between 4 schools and you only have 20 in your care at one time."

I should make it my vow today to start telling all the teachers "what their job is"! Believe me that wouldnt go over well but for the ole nurse well we can just treat her however ya know.

27 more school days this year!!!!!

Specializes in Psych, Peds, Education, Infection Control.
No sadly they all know I am here. Its more of a power trip issue. "I am a teacher not a nurse"

But it sure is funny how if a kid wants to go home, they suddenly become medical experts...

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Specializes in Psych, Peds, Education, Infection Control.
What IS it about SPED classroom staff, anyway?? Of course it's not across the board, but they seem to be more unreasonable on the whole than other teachers. I constantly bumped up against an ECC group that always wanted to send kiddos home for ANY reason that could possibly be construed as health-related, esp. "they're tired." Honestly, I think that lowering their caseload for the day plays a significant role in motivating this trend.

A lot of the time during my school nurse days, I was in SPED classrooms. Some of it is this, for sure. And I found a lot of it is people just being so scared of literally anything that a kid that isn't neurotypical does. "WHAT IF IT'S A BIG DEAL AND I MISS IT." ...but, yeah, there is definitely the "this kid is driving me nuts" factor sometimes. I'd be literally IN the classroom sometimes, telling them the kid was fine, and I'd get funny looks. And when I did need to send a kid home from there, getting a hold of the parents was sometimes real fun. There seemed to be two predominate types of SPED parents - helicopters who wanted their baby nestled in bed if they blinked funny, and "no this is YOUR time to deal with them" who wouldn't take them home/keep them home for anything.

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What IS it about SPED classroom staff, anyway?? Of course it's not across the board, but they seem to be more unreasonable on the whole than other teachers. I constantly bumped up against an ECC group that always wanted to send kiddos home for ANY reason that could possibly be construed as health-related, esp. "they're tired." Honestly, I think that lowering their caseload for the day plays a significant role in motivating this trend.

I hate to say it, but I totally agree with this!!! I have been at my campus 6 years and had a really strong, good SPED team in the beginning. They handles tiny scratches, etc. Over the years - that department has been totally replaced by the opposite. They cannot (MORE LIKE WILL NOT) handle anything. They bring me non-verbal kids and the aides aren't even able to tell me the poor child's name or why they are bringing them in. Then, they leave the non-verbal child's ipad (their only form of communication) in the classroom - like I am supposed to take one look at this kid and magically know who they are and what they need.

One day, they called me on my radio demanding I come to the cafeteria (a 5 minute walk from my office) to take a kid's temp. I was in the middle of passing noon meds. Their lunch was within 4 minutes of being over AND they have to walk past my clinic to get back to their classroom.

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i get that attitude. I can't tell you how many times I have been called away from my lunch or from another detail because there is a student with a nosebleed in the office. I'll begrudgingly stop what i'm doing to go and check it out to find that it's literally a drop of blood on a tissue. And they wonder why i'm salty. I've begun taking my lunch off site from time to time just to prove a point.

I'm sorry you school nurses have to deal with this nonsense .

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Specializes in Cardiology, School Nursing, General.
I'm sorry you school nurses have to deal with this nonsense .

I'm a Medical Aide at a school and we do deal with all this all the time.

Sometimes it's not the kids, it's the teachers that send them to me because "They felt a little hot" and the SPED kids in my school, are not this issue, it seems to be the opposite. The SPED teachers and aides are on top of these kids and unless they are not feeling well, I don't see them. The "normal" kids, the teachers are the ones who send them for ANYTHING, and I'm pretty sure to get rid of them. Unless it's something severe, I just send them back, unless they are upset and need to cool down a bit, which I do let them and they go back.

Of course, I do those times that a child just wants to vent or talk to someone, and they come to my office, that I understand.

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Specializes in NCSN.
I hate to say it, but I totally agree with this!!! I have been at my campus 6 years and had a really strong, good SPED team in the beginning. They handles tiny scratches, etc. Over the years - that department has been totally replaced by the opposite. They cannot (MORE LIKE WILL NOT) handle anything.

This is my fear. Right now I have an AWESOME SPED team. The two main teachers are no nonsense, kind and wonderful people, and the paras that have been at the school a while are just like them. But we have cycled through a few new paras due to staff retiring and almost every one of them has been awful.

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