Volunteer nurse, am I liable?

[Lindslou2]

Hi, I am a nurse supervisor at a local community health clinic and a volunteer at my children's private school. I am their nurse, I report to they state for immunizations, advise on things from lice to chickenpox, and do the annual health screen. I am not on site at the school however. Every year when I do our state reporting (Wa state) the school is always super late getting these immunization records to me, and have many (16 kids) this year are either with out any records or still needing multiple immunizations. We are a small school of 160 students. Its difficult to even report with so many children out of compliance.

This has been very frustrating, every year these children, are allowed to continue to attend. Can I be held liable for their poor compliance, if there is an outbreak, even though I am a volunteer and not employed by the school? We have had several outbreaks of pertussis, chicken pox, and a few measles in our state. As a parent I just assume that all children are vaccinated as required in our state to attend school or have a letter of exemption, as I am sure the other parents do. I feel very much uneasy about contiuning to volunteer in this role. Thoughts?!

[RiskManager]

Speaking as a Washington state risk manager, I would not worry overly much about it. Compliance with vaccination requirements is primarily an issue of the parents, and perhaps secondarily the school administration in terms of enforcing state regulations in this regard. Unless it is in your job description as a volunteer to try to either enforce or educate on vaccine compliance, it is hard to see how it is a duty for which you could be held liable.

Your FTCA deeming/liability coverage from the CHC does not follow you to your volunteer work for the school. Generally speaking, the Liability Insurance of the typical school provides coverage to the volunteers. Private schools can be all over the map on this, however, so you can always ask the building administrator as to if they have liability coverage, and does that coverage extend to the volunteers.

So the bottom line is that I would not lose too much sleep over this.

[OldDude]

Ditto - if you were employed by the school and had the authority and responsibility to exclude children from attending school in accordance to the state immunization requirements and you didn't - yes. Otherwise, like RiskManager said, don't worry about it.