One of our teachers was riding his bike to work on the bike trail yesterday, when an off-leash dog crashed into his tire and knocked the bike out from under him. His elbow, hip, and calf took beatings.
He needed to clean up these fairly gnarly-looking cuts and scrapes, so he went to the school nurse (who's only on campus a couple days a week). She's not allowed to perform medicine--what's she there for?--so she didn't even have alcohol to clean him up.
He then asked the teachers in rooms near his first aid supplies they had. One even got a first aid kit out of her car but it didn't have anything he needed beyond a large bandage. I overheard the conversation and was sure I had iodine in mine, but when we got to my classroom and opened up my first aid kit the only things of value for him were bandages and some antiseptic cream.
Joking about that in the staff lounge today, one of our chemistry teachers overheard. The biker should have gone to the chemistry teacher, as he said that he has plenty of alcohol, iodine, etc.
At our school, if you get scraped up, I guess you have to go to the chemistry teacher--because no one else can help you.
5 comments:
Snark: But I am sure that she is able to help students become the opposite gender or help young women get abortions all without parental knowledge.
I am sure that the chemistry lab's alcohol and iodine are probably a purer grade than you would find in a first aid kit. I'm thinking 100% iso-propanol vs 70% etc.
As a chemist, I'm just glad that we have a very good first aid kit at work.
I've got a couple of friends who were school nurses. Both were highly trained-one had run a clinic for the US Army in Japan, the other had done all her training at Parkland ER, one of the busiest hospitals in the nation. Their main jobs were paperwork-going through the immunization history for every single student. Secondary were the required annual vision and hearing tests for every student. And finally it was the supervision of some very serious psychotropic drugs for students as well as supervision of seriously disabled students who were on catheters. They couldn't give a student with a migraine a Tylenol. There were times I had to insist they send students home who were throwing up in my classroom. This isn't the nurse's policy, it is policy put in place by administrators who are not nurses.
In Britain, of course you would go to the chemists!
Of course the Chemistry teacher.
Think about your anecdote. No, really think about it, because your administration is not serious. Just guessing, but your school is the workplace for 80 teachers, 30 other employees and a 1000 children. There is no provisions for minor cuts and bruises. There is a nurse who isn't allowed to do anything and probably a defibrillator.
How much time has your school spent talking about a statistically unlikely school shooting, but zero time planning for likely incidents?
FYI: In any medical situation, an experienced coach is a good choice.
It's weird that will all the dumb Ed classes we have to take, PD and other hoops to keep certified, we don't have to be First Aid and CPR certified.
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