Nurses take on schools over insulin shots (Obama is against the nurses union)

[HiPointDem]

246. I disagree, and I don't think you grasp all the issues involved. Physically giving a shot of

insulin is very easy, certainly. You don't have to find a vein, just jab the stomach.

That's the least of it.

1. School nurses do more than administer insulin.

2. This suit opens the door to using non-medical personnel to administer all medical services in schools. You may have read the post about the teachers being tasked with changing catheters. These are the kinds of things going on these days. We can make the same argument: anyone can be trained to change a catheter, people do it at home for themselves, their spouses and kids, etc. But it's also a procedure with a potentially serious risk picture. What parent would want anyone besides an experienced medical professional doing it for their child?

3. While it is easy to give a shot of insulin, it is much less easy to give multiple kids multiple shots of different kinds of insulin at different doses on different schedules, as well as dispense other meds to other kids, as well as deal with other medical issues (like catheters), as well as understanding how each kid's medical issues, sensitivities, reactivities may affect their response, as well as recognize emergency situations that arise in the course of such duties and know how to handle them *automatically,* not to mention record-keeping, contacts with other medical providers, parents and staff.

The kind of global, integrated knowledge that a nurse has through training and experience can't be replicated by training teachers or medical assistants in narrow subroutines, like robots.

4. It is not fair or wise to task teachers with providing medical care in addition to their other duties; nor is it fair or wise to have unsupervised medical assistants making $8-$15/hours tasked with duties that may potentially kill or harm children. The liability & potential harm alone is above their pay grade. You may have read the post about the untrained person who injected the wrong meds, a situation that could have ended in death. These things *will* happen, but they are less likely to happen the more highly trained and experienced the person in charge is, and that person is better equipped to deal with emergencies when they arise as well.

It's not the case, as one poster claimed, that there are only two kinds of insulin & you just need to give x units of insulin for every x units of blood sugar over normal, or that every kid will get a shot on the schedule he claimed. Does an MA know what to do if the kid is diabetic and pregnant, or is a brittle diabetic, or what to do besides call 911 if a kid starts seizing?

5. There are liability issues for schools. Posters seem to think these don't matter, but in fact they can potentially bankrupt districts. An outcome that perhaps this admin would like, since they are doing their best to destroy public education, but it's not an outcome the public should like, since they will pay the bill and the piper.

6. The major impact of such measures, if allowed to become policy, will fall, as always, on low-income schools and districts, because upper-middle class schools and districts *will* have school nurses. The cut-rate options are always especially for the poor, who 'can't afford' best practices.

5. The nurses are upholding professional standards. That is what they *should* be doing. Any suggestion that this reflects badly on them is hogwash.