School forgot to give medication

I think YABU. I do think a 7 year old should remember. At my children's school, medicine needs to be kept at the office, and the child would go to the office to take the medicine. Mine would have managed that fine. Children with diabetes/asthma/severe allergies all have detailed plans which are displayed in the medical room in the office and all staff will be aware of the ongoing plan, completely different and in no way related to your child's one off round of antibiotics.

It's human error and that's all there really is to it. The school should have managed it but they didn't because someone forgot. Not ideal but is was an error.

I am finding the constant references to class teachers infuriating though. I appreciate in a few schools (and it surely is very few) teachers might get involved but giving medicine is not in my remit as a teacher. If it is the responsibility of someone else in school to do it, it will not be on my radar. I am busy with my own responsibilities. I do the jobs my line manager, the head, has set out for me to do just like other people do in theirs. I can only hope other people on the team are doing their best too so that overall we do the best by the children we care for. That doesn't mean the class teacher doing everything and in fact that's exactly what leads to errors like in this case.

Comparing this to diabetes is ridiculous. Any pupil with diabetes will have an app that sends a notification when medicine is needed, so it won't be forgotten. Other serious illnesses will have similar systems in place. This isn't a serious case.

Nobodies trying to say it's no biggie but there might be 30 kids in a class with things going on i myself have occasionally forgotten to give an antibiotics dose to my own children and I only have two kids ,yes it's annoying
But if my son forgot his insulin dose it's far more serious than just annoying and there should be things in place so that doesn't happen in schools.

Have you looked at your schools policy? They should have a medical one.

If you feel strongly to complain it could stop it happening to someone else. You'll be very unlikely to get an apology but hopefully behind the scenes they might organize themselves better.

@Popsicle82646 was there a medication form filled in for the antibiotics?

Whether it's a temp form for antibiotics or a care plan for diabetes forgetting either is a failure of care on the schools part. Children are not responsible for managing their medications in school. It's statuary policy for all schools to keep records of medication and should have a designated person overseeing it.

unless DH greeted DD with "have you been given your antibiotics", DD has a tongue in her head to tell DH - why is she not capable of doing that with Teacher?

You have two options. Ring school during the day and remind them to give them to her. Wake her up when you got to bed to give her a dose.

I've had to do both of those things with my children previously.

Ideally school would have remembered, but there's so much going on in the day, could have been other issues that arose that caused the teacher to become distracted. Regular medications in our school are given by a dedicated staff member on a schedule, so managed differently to short term like antibiotics.

It could happen that medication for diabetes is missed, you are right. But it would be the mistake of failing to adhere to a prescribed care plan, and that would be a different mistake to the one of failing to remember a one of dose of medication that will have no serious consequences if missed.

Two different mistakes. Not the same mistake, even though your example relates to medication.

Ok, I'm going to try one more time to explain what I meant as it's clearly not coming across how I typed it.
@Popsicle82646 It is coming across exactly as you typed it. You are not understanding the difference, or that it is your responsibility to give your child antibiotics.

There’s a lot going on in schools, missing one dose is fine, it will make no difference if you gave one more dose at the end of the school. If not be making a thing of it.

But as many have pointed out, thats not the case at all. There are different processes for something as serious and regular as insulin.

But it is not at all clear what you are trying to debate.
If an insulin dose is missed, it can be deadly. It's a fact that does not require debating.
If antibiotics were missed, insulin could hypothetically be missed? Well, multiple posters explained to you why this is unlikely to be the case.
What is up for debate, then?

Disorganisation in schools? Conduct of the teacher? Whether or not a 7-year-old is capable of remembering medication?

Also being on antibiotics is usually a short term course and whilst a missed one is annoying it's not the end of the world somebody who insulin dependent ,will have take it with every meal.

As you were not there to hear the conversation I do think it's wrong to go to inference of blame. You could read the teachers question, as I did, in many tones and throw in the general fluster of most conversations that happen at dismissal time.

Mitigation of the risk of someone forgetting the dose could have been eliminated by setting a timer on your own phone and ringing the office or setting up a timed email.

The diabetic comparison isn't reasonable almost certainly because that child would have a care plan, an allocated carer and if absent a back up all managed by one of the SLT. I know this happens in our school even though there are 550+ 3-11 age kids.

I'm not shifting blame, I just think there's more than one angle and at the end of the day just one missed dose of antibiotics. At best, irritating but not disastrous.

The point is and i know there is an example upthread were insulin was missed ,but usually when a child is diagnosed with Diabetes, there will be meeting ,s with school on how to manage the condition because its such a serious condition

My son was diagnosed in year 11.he was 16 and only had a few months of school ,but i still had to go into school and discussed with his head of pastoral care his needs and where he might need to keep spare needles etc.
They also needed to know what signs to look for if his blood sugers ,were to high/ low ,he was pulled out of a couple of his exams because his CGM was alerting
So i don't agree that ( generally) it could just aa easily have happened with a child's insulin

Some of the schools round here won't give medicine exactly because of parents making a fuss like this.
So continue if you want. But if they tell you next time they won't agree to give it and expect you to come in to give it, it's your own fault.

Ah that does sound worrying I have a diabetic som too although he was 16 when he was diagnosed so able to manage it himself he's not been given the pump yet he still uses the pens and has a,CGM.

Yes I appreciate that, as I said it wasn’t a good comparison from the op. I was making a point that an antibiotic is more important (in the very short term) to remember than an ADHD medication as an example, but I’d still be annoyed if my children missed their non-life saving meds and were blamed for not reminding the teacher.

It is the issue though ,I have a diabetic 18 year old he very nearly died on diagnosis as he was in DKA ,missing a dose of of insulin could have very serious consequences, which is absolutely not comparable to missing a dose of antibiotics.

For food an amount needs to be manually entered for grams of carbs to deliver a dose to cover food.

This should be recorded.

His old school claimed to have records of this dose. Then 'lost' them. They couldn't explain to the diabetes nurse how it wasn't showing up on pump data, or explain why no action was taken when my son had blood glucose in the 20s that afternoon.

@Popsicle82646 you’re getting a hard time, as is typical with MN you’ve made a bad comparison and they’re jumped over it. It’s absolutely not in a 7 year old to remind teachers she needs her medicine. She evidently needs it for a reason, the severity of the illness is not the point here. I have two children who take ADHD medication every day, one doesn’t have an EHCP. I’d be very annoyed if they forgot to give either child medicine and tried to blame them (though they wouldn’t forget twice just from the behaviour differences).