Stanford, CA: Medical needs of students overwhelm school nurses
- May 29, 2018
- 2 min read
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world.
Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students.
Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
CHECK OUT MY SUBSTACK:
https://annedachel.substack.com/
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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Aug 2, 2017, Stanford (CA) Peninsula Press: School nurses face challenges meeting health needs of all students http://peninsulapress.com/2017/08/02/school-nurses/
In a recent Friday, minutes before noon, Judy Camerlengo met a second grader for diabetic care in her office, a small room with a desk, cork board, cot bed and medicine cabinet at a Redwood City elementary school....
“The state of school nursing has changed in the last 20 years that I have been a school nurse,” Camerlengo said. “When I first started we were at one school site the whole day. But now the medical needs of our students have changed and there’s more demand for direct care during school hours.” ...
Camerlengo said when she first started there was one student with diabetes in the district. Now there are six....
After a hectic lunch hour of health treatments and first aid, Camerlengo said many nurses eat lunch while driving to the next school. She estimated a nurse averages 30 students a day for first aid, in addition to providing diabetic care, dispensing routine prescriptions and asthma treatments, tending to allergic reactions, caring for students with epilepsy and other medical conditions, filing paperwork, following up with doctors, creating care plans and organizing screenings. …
While an anaphylaxis reaction, a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction, is rare, she said that with an increase in food allergies, her team is more commonly preparing for this type of emergency.
Licensed vocational nurses, who work under the supervision of registered nurses, cover school sites with seizures when a registered nurse isn’t there.
With an increase in students requiring one-on-one care and nurses rotating school sites daily, office staff and teachers in Redwood City, like many school districts today, are trained to handle first aid and other medical care when a nurse isn’t on site, including how to administer EpiPens and seizure protocol. Camerlengo said parents are called more frequently to pick up students as well. …
The nurses also oversee care for medically fragile students, some of whom may have more than one diagnosis. Valerie Cantrell, a nurse in the district, serves a majority of the medically fragile children. ...
… Experts are concerned that with the continued increase in medical conditions, the workload on small nursing teams will undermine the ability to provide support to all children. …
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