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Morning all!

I've continued to watch our flu numbers rise. Is there a certain number I have to reach before I need to notify the health department? This is our first year where we've had illness hit this hard so it's new territory for me.

I'm located in Texas, btw ?

0 Votes
Specializes in school nursing.

Ours are rising as well in North Texas. Following...

2 Votes
Specializes in ICU/community health/school nursing.

We report weekly to the county. So the county already theoretically knows. It's a dual report- mine and the PEIMS clerk's actual body count.

What does your policy say?

1 Votes
Specializes in School Health.

Mine is 3 in the same class or 4 total in the school we have to notify our local health department.

1 Votes

LOTS of flu here in MA, including my own son and husband. What I am noticing though, is there are still SO many people who say "I have the flu" but have not actually seen a doctor and been diagnosed with influenza. I have also had several parents say their kid had the flu, only to find out it was a GI bug that they were calling "The Flu". I even has a teacher come back after being out two days saying she was down and out with the flu. I asked her about symptoms, if she took Tamiflu, etc. and then she says "On I never went to the doctor and didn't have a fever, just threw up a few times".

I am sure there are several that had the "flu-like" illness that was not influenza, and several who had the flu who never got diagnosed...really hard to keep track around here.

6 Votes
Specializes in ICU/community health/school nursing.
Just now, MHDNURSE said:

LOTS of flu here in MA, including my own son and husband. What I am noticing though, is there are still SO many people who say "I have the flu" but have not actually seen a doctor and been diagnosed with influenza. I have also had several parents say their kid had the flu, only to find out it was a GI bug that they were calling "The Flu". I even has a teacher come back after being out two days saying she was down and out with the flu. I asked her about symptoms, if she took Tamiflu, etc. and then she says "On I never went to the doctor and didn't have a fever, just threw up a few times".

I am sure there are several that had the "flu-like" illness that was not influenza, and several who had the flu who never got diagnosed...really hard to keep track around here.

We have both A and B strains here in the NTX, along with the virus that looks like the flu but is neither A nor B. PLUS a wicked stomach bug. When I went to the doc in the box on Sunday to treat what had become reactive airways (perhaps caused by a viral illness but almost certainly exacerbated by the drunk weather here in NTX) the nurse tried to swab me for flu. Lady...it's been five days. What does this tell us?

I'm just telling everyone to wash their hands!!!!

1 Votes
1 hour ago, ruby_jane said:

We report weekly to the county. So the county already theoretically knows. It's a dual report- mine and the PEIMS clerk's actual body count.

What does your policy say?

We don't have policy for this....?

0 Votes
Specializes in ICU/community health/school nursing.
1 minute ago, KeeperOfTheIceRN said:

We don't have policy for this....?

Sweet baby Moses.....

0 Votes
1 hour ago, MHDNURSE said:

LOTS of flu here in MA, including my own son and husband. What I am noticing though, is there are still SO many people who say "I have the flu" but have not actually seen a doctor and been diagnosed with influenza. I have also had several parents say their kid had the flu, only to find out it was a GI bug that they were calling "The Flu". I even has a teacher come back after being out two days saying she was down and out with the flu. I asked her about symptoms, if she took Tamiflu, etc. and then she says "On I never went to the doctor and didn't have a fever, just threw up a few times".

I am sure there are several that had the "flu-like" illness that was not influenza, and several who had the flu who never got diagnosed...really hard to keep track around here.

Yeah, I've sent home sooooo many with ILI. I've got a list of the ones we've had MD confirmation on and the number is quite high. Especially for our small student body population. The number is doubled if I count the ones that just went/stayed home for ILI.

0 Votes
3 minutes ago, ruby_jane said:

Sweet baby Moses.....

We have the generic "the school nurse has to notify the health department of certain communicable diseases" but it doesn't specify a time frame or a certain number.

0 Votes
Specializes in school nursing.
2 hours ago, ruby_jane said:

We have both A and B strains here in the NTX, along with the virus that looks like the flu but is neither A nor B. PLUS a wicked stomach bug. When I went to the doc in the box on Sunday to treat what had become reactive airways (perhaps caused by a viral illness but almost certainly exacerbated by the drunk weather here in NTX) the nurse tried to swab me for flu. Lady...it's been five days. What does this tell us?

I'm just telling everyone to wash their hands!!!!

We have mostly flu A strains here and the crazy stomach bug too. I've sent home almost just as many stomach bugs/vomiting as I have suspected flus this week.

0 Votes

Our health department has access to certain portions of our EMR's. There is a box for us to check if student has temp >101 and cough and/or sore throat. They pull the numbers weekly.

1 Votes
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