When to call and not call parents?

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Hello my fellow school nurse friends,

My school district consist of the students running the parents and the parents running the school district. With that being said, the parents has my school's principals walking on egg shells. So the principal wants me to call the parents for any and everything from a small scratch to a loose tooth. Do any of you school nurses call parents for every little thing? And when do you not call parents?

Specializes in School health, pediatrics.

Those of you calling for marks, what age group do you serve? My middle schoolers I don't usually call for monir cuts and abrasions. If it looks like it may need tended to at home I call. Otherwise its head, face, and neck injuries or things I, as a mom, would want a call about.

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Specializes in School nursing.
Those of you calling for marks, what age group do you serve? My middle schoolers I don't usually call for monir cuts and abrasions. If it looks like it may need tended to at home I call. Otherwise its head, face, and neck injuries or things I, as a mom, would want a call about.

Same for me and I serve MS and HS. I don't call for an injury I can simply bandaid unless I am worried about it needing extra attention at home - i.e. continuing cleaning to reduce infection.

I also work on teaching students - more my upperclassmen HS students - to use their voice at home. I cannot tell you have many times I ask "well, did you tell someone at home" and get a "no. You can call them to tell them." Nope. Not for a minor thing. You can stay in school and tell them after school. (Usually because parent would rightly brush it off and they think my calling makes it "serious.")

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Specializes in School health, pediatrics.

I also work on teaching students - more my upperclassmen HS students - to use their voice at home. I cannot tell you have many times I ask "well, did you tell someone at home" and get a "no. You can call them to tell them." Nope. Not for a minor thing. You can stay in school and tell them after school. (Usually because parent would rightly brush it off and they think my calling makes it "serious.")

I usually tell kids that have something going on for days or from home that they need to tell their parents that it is still bothering them when they get home. For example, my knee has hurt for three weeks (not limping), I hurt my elbow over the summer and today it hurts.

As a mom, when I see the school number it makes me worried, once my son needed stitches, so when I rush to answer or call back and its "Nolan needed a bandaid" I'm like, what the heck, im at work!

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Specializes in School nursing.

As a mom, when I see the school number it makes me worried, once my son needed stitches, so when I rush to answer or call back and its "Nolan needed a bandaid" I'm like, what the heck, im at work!

This is why after I say that is the school nurse calling, I will also say "this isn't an emergency" and ask them to call me back when they receive my message.

But the number of people that react first and don't check voicemail at all had me re-consider what needs a phone call vs. what doesn't, to be honest.

I once had a parent very upset with me because I didn't call for a minor glue gun burn. Skin slightly reddened, no blistering - apparently blistering did happen later, but student never returned to my office to report it (which I thought was odd as student is FF). I did cleanse and use some Burn Gel at the time. I see so many glue gun burns as the art classroom is right next to my office and most are minor with the occasional glue gun disaster.

Parent was a nurse and asked me to call her every single time her child came to see me. Okay. So I did. As I mentioned her child was a FF, asking for chapstick and bandaids at lot. And I called every time. Parent was upset with that. Meh, sometimes you never win.

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i have a question , legally if a student comes in and talks to me about smoking, suicide, theft and self harm do i have to call and tell their parents ? i am talking about a 13 year old girl in this instance

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I was previously in long term care and home care and now I'm going into my first full year of being a school nurse (did a half year in 2018) and I have found that it all boils down to the injury, the age of the child and the temperament of the parents. Some parents these days are over the top with how much they freak for the smallest things. Kids get cuts, kids run into things and each other. They get bruises and scrapes at recess, it's part of being a kid. My school goes from pre-K to 5th, so my kids range in age from 4-10. I get parents that freak over a paper cut and those that don't feel the need to let the school know their kid is being treated for ringworm. I only call if A: I know the parents are hyper anal, B: The child sustains and injury to the head or face resulting in a bump or noticeable bruising or if the kid needs to go home or MD follow up may be needed. This coming year I'm sending notes home rather than calling on some of these just because I get frequent flyers that think they can go home because they ate too fast and vomited. Nice try guys, not on my watch!

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Specializes in Peds, MS, DIDD, Corrections, HH, LTC, School Nurse.
On 11/30/2017 at 1:19 PM, BeckyESRN said:

I could not realistically care for these kids and call every parent, every day, for every visit. Giving phone calls an average of 3 minutes, I would have spent 3.15 hours on the phone on Monday and had to tend to 63+ children and administer my meds...

Not to mention the long list of contact numbers with "no voicemail set up" or "voicemail is full" or non-working numbers! UGH!!!

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For those that have offered guidelines on when they call parents, I mostly agree - anything head/face related, soft tissue injuries that may result in a bruise, bone injuries, etc. I do call for kids who I sense are visiting me to avoid class or d/t anxiety, because I found that if I don't keep a paper trail of letting their parents know, all of a sudden they are visiting me daily or multiple times a day and then it's a big surprise to the parents. So, my rule of thumb is: For any student that visits more than twice in one week (not for daily meds or expected use of prn meds, and not for cough drops or tampons, or OTC things that you would expect would be used for about a week in normal circumstances), I let their advisor and parents know. This has caught a LOT of academic issues and psychosocial problems early.

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*I should also mention that I work at an affluent private school, and a lot of parents are doctors... as you all know, some docs are very passive about their kids' nurse visits (because it's usually minor and they are glad to have someone handle it for them), and others want to get an ortho consult on a kid who jams their finger during recess.. it's just the nature of the beast. I have a few parents I call for any little thing, but I developed these guidelines based on anticipating the expectations of this population.

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