Start your day with a good reaming out!

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Ah - nothing quite starts the day out like a Mamabear coming at you for doing nothing for her child's headache. Didn't I know that child gets cluster headaches? Uh -apparently not since this is the first we are discussing it. Also given the fact that I haven't actually seen child since December ( only visit all year)and suspect they may have been seen while I was attending to something out of the office by a coverage - uh, no- I do not see any patterns here.

On the plus side - when I explained my side and those tidbits, the claws were retracted and the conversation ended pleasantly.

Specializes in Peds, Neuro, Orthopedics.

In my schools we send letters for every little thing. I'm new at school nursing. Can someone point me to some good data about why not to send letters?

I agree that letters just makes parents paranoid. I had a phone call from a parent about what we should do about the strep "epidemic" we're having in kindergarten (3 cases out of about 80 kinder, and 2 of those cases were twins, so that doesn't really count as 2 cases since one got it from the other!!!!). Yup. She wanted to organize parents to scrub the classrooms. Yet these parent think nothing of stuffing tylenol down their kid's throats and sending them to school when they had a fever yesterday...

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Oh, parents and lice posts on Facebook. Kill.me.now.

Parents are completely unaware of our actual health policies like "don't send your kid to school with a fever or 5 minutes after they vomited" but they are totally cool with dreaming up imaginary lice policies like "Nurse NanaPoo disregards the school lice letter policy and doesn't make us aware when a student has lice in the classroom."

I have been disregarding the lice letter policy for years because 1) it doesn't exist and 2) if it did exist I would banish it because SCIENCE.

LOVE this! because SCIENCE is the best! I'm a fan of saying "because I like all of my decisions to be based on best practice and scientific evidence, not google" to my crazy teachers

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Specializes in ED, School Nurse.
In my schools we send letters for every little thing. I'm new at school nursing. Can someone point me to some good data about why not to send letters?
Head Lice Management in the School Setting (Revised 216)

The above link is the NASN position statement on Head Lice Management and this is what it says about letters home:

"Communication between school personnel and parents/caregivers highlighting cases of head lice (e.g., head lice outbreak letters”) has been shown to increase community anxiety, increase social stigma causing embarrassment of affected infested students, and puts students' rights to confidentiality at risk (Gordon, 2007; Pontius, 2014)."

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Specializes in school/military/OR/home health.
Head Lice Management in the School Setting (Revised 216)

The above link is the NASN position statement on Head Lice Management and this is what it says about letters home:

"Communication between school personnel and parents/caregivers highlighting cases of head lice (e.g., head lice outbreak letters”) has been shown to increase community anxiety, increase social stigma causing embarrassment of affected infested students, and puts students' rights to confidentiality at risk (Gordon, 2007; Pontius, 2014)."

THANK YOU!!! I am dealing with a whole panic and witch hunt nonsense situation this morning and I needed this but didn't have the wherewithal (sp?) to find it. Ugh. I am getting crap for quietly sending a letter with treatment instructions home instead of calling and then telling the teachers who has what. Vindication!!

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Specializes in Peds, Neuro, Orthopedics.

Thanks Ohiobobcat.

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