To be completely furious with my daughters school?!

[bigfam]

So yesterday I picked my children up from school, dd1 was crying at the door, so I asked her what was wrong and she told me that whilst practicing for sports day she had fallen and hurt her foot, she refused to walk properly, I asked her if she'd been to the medical room (because only the week before she collapsed after school, after not feeling well, the school told her to have a drink and she'd be fine) she said she had and that they'd put an ice pack in it and sent her on her way, they didn't even remove her sock.

Fast forward a few hours, I knew something was wrong, so took her to a&e and sure enough it's broken, she's now in q cast for 4-6 weeks.
Aibu to be furious that they didn't call me, and left her in agony and unable to walk for 2 hours? She was clearly in pain and had been crying and after her collapsing last week I specifically asked them to keep an eye on her.
I'd like a meeting with the head teacher, I won't lose my temper but I'm very upset, is there anything I can do? Thanks in advance

oliver

I was sent back to class with a bleeding head bump even after my friend told me I'd momentarily passed out. matron assessed me as ok and sent me to class. despite the fact blood was matting my hair together and my collar made me look like an extra in buffy

My experience of breaks - one minor wrist break for DD and a very serious compound double fracture for DS - is that with serious injuries a combination of shock and adrenalin can result in even habitual drama llamas behaving uncharacteristically stoically.

When my dd broke her wrist I knew immediately what had happened because of the absence of amateur dramatics.

So I do agree that it can be hard to judge, but two misjudgements in quick succession is a sign that something may not be right.

The hospital should have asked for the schools address DD had an asthma attack at lunch he asked for his inhaler but no one gave it to him. He was blue when I collected him The staff member said Oh let me find the teacher er no find his inhaler first ..ffs .. hospital sent a letter and then they altered their policies .. check if the hospital do this. Would be interesting to know where the letters go.

I think it's a good thing they didn't take her sock off.

When I broke my ankle in the classroom the teacher in the medical room said my socks were too nice to cut off so she pulled it over my broken ankle.

Agony.

a similar thing happened to a little friend of DD2's- broke her arm at lunchtime and nothing was done about it until her mum picked her up.

The parents complained and the teachers/TAs were all given a new first aid course - and obviously the event itself was a reminder to look properly and err on the side of caution. That's the point isn't it? To try to avoid this happening again?

Such a shame that a child has to go through all that though, poor little thing. i hope she is OK now.

It is hard to judge, which is why we have x rays etc. If it were easy to judge a doctor would just look at you and tell you if it were broken!

This being so, schools have to err on the side of caution. I'd always send a child home if I wasn't sure.

oh my goodness, lay off the OP, it doesn't matter where she took her child immediately to a&e or not (but she did - to reiterate). The school did fail in their duty of care and also didn't do the paper trail correctly. No incident form? thats really bad because with an incident form the parent would have been at least notified of what had happened and could have looked out for 'warning signs'. Thankfully she is a responsible mother and dealt with it herself.

OP, I would write an email first where you say you are disappointed in how the school handled it and had to go to a&e immediately after school and doctors said x,y,y. In your email ask for to be sent a complaint form. Then you call the school and request a meeting. they will take you more seriously if there is already something in writing.

poor dd x

itsmine I am really scare of that happening at my house, that must have been tricky. However, the school is different, they are professionals who are trained and who have a first aider or nurse to deal with accidents. I think more can be expected from school, at least an incident form, which is required for all incidents, however minor.

My DD had a bit of a fall playing lacrosse at school. She bumped her head and hurt her elbow. Whey school called me concerned about her bumped head. When i got to the school DD was pale and looked in pain. She kept saying my head is okay but my arm is sore, but the nurse went over the bumped head protocol and we left the school. When i got home she burst into tears and said her arm was in agony. Went straight to A&E and found out her elbow was fractured.

I did call the school, just to let them know what had happened and to let them know she couldn't write (in a sling not a cast). The school were horrified they missed it. I didn't think to make a fuss because sometimes, with the best will in the world, people do miss things.

I would go into school calmly and ask exactly what happened. I imagine they had lots of kids falling over and many bumps to deal with if they were practising sports. They missed the seriousness of your DD's accident but they are not doctors, just first aiders.

Its incredibly hard to tell. This might out me but DS2 was stamped on very hard by another child whilst at school and it broke his collar bone. Luckily it was close to home time and so I arrived an hour later anyway. He was very teary and said it really hurt. My friend who is a consultant in A&E said it was possible it was fractured but it might be fine. We did go to A&E but not until he woke up crying in pain about 5 hours later.

How is anyone supposed to know without an x ray? A school nurse doesn't have anywhere near the experience of an ED consultant.

It is easy to miss a break. I know a couple of people who have done it. However it seems the school didn't spend much time with the Op's daughter. I hate how blase schools are about injuries and the stupid ways they deal with them. If you bump your head at dd's school they give you a couple of wet paper towels. I don't know why they bother sending staff on first aid courses.

She did not take her straight away, she changed her story when it was pointed out. Otherwise she would have said "I went straight to a&e" and not "fast forward a few hours..."

They gave first aid and presumably she wasn't in such pain or fell so awkwardly that they felt the need to contact you or call an ambulance. She was left for maybe an hour or two at most before pick up. How old is dd? Make sure it is recorded in the accident book but I'm not sure what else you would have expected them to do if the seriousness of the injury was not self evident. Hope she is more comfortable today.

youareallbonkers, 'fast forward a few hours' is referring to the time between DD getting hurt at school ('... they didn't even remove her sock') to the OP's arrival ('...I knew something was wrong'). It read perfectly clearly now the OP's clarified that she took her to A&E straight away.

When I collected DS2 from school with a wrist injury, I was very sceptical that there was much damage. There was a little swelling and he complained it hurt but it didn't really look that bad. I look him to A&E because the school told me I should, rather than because I really thought we needed to go. By the time we'd waited 3 hours at A&E it was very swollen indeed - so it's entirely possible that it didn't look that bad when they looked at it at lunchtime

This isn't really about whether the school diagnosed OPs child correctly. It's about the school not calling a parent after a pupil had an accident and was subsequently in pain and crying all afternoon.

I'd talk to the class teacher to check out that this was the case and take it further to the head if needed. It could be that when you arrived she became much more upset than she had been.

My toddler broke her leg last week. I took her to the GP after a few hours, who said it was unlikely to be broken and leave it 24 hours. After about 4 hours she still wouldn't weight bear so I took her to a&e, 8 hours after she did it. These things are sometimes unfortunately missed, especially if the child is putting a brave face on it.
I agree you should have a chat with the school but I don't think an 'all guns blazing' complaint is the right approach.

Some schools seem very reluctant to send children home. I wouldn't have expected them to know there was a break, but I would expect them to take it seriously and to contact me.

Primary school was much worse for this in my experience. The staff actually dealing with the incident are usually office staff, who won't know the children that well, so can either be too lenient or too harsh - they won't know Jim is a drama queen but Brenda never complains and Darren will agree with whatever an adult tells him.
At secondary once they got to the medical room my DC were almost always sent home (I think if a sit and cup of cool water didn't sure it that was the only thing they offered).

youareallbonkers, it's always a bit embarrassing to have it pointed out that you've missed important info by not reading the (short) thread, or at least the OP's posts. But it's not very nice to deal with it by calling the OP a liar, is it?

I read her OP as going to A&E straight away before she clarified (I read 'fast forward a few hours' as taking her to diagnosis point.) It's clear from the thread that there were a number of different ways the words could be -and were - interpreted.

OP - I think there's definitely a broader issue to discuss with the head after 2 recent incidents. Yes - go in calmly, but I wouldn't underplay the seriousness of the situation. You were sufficiently worried to take her to A&E straight away; it seems unlikely her condition signifucantly changed at the exact moment you picked her up.

I may be slightly scarred by memories of breaking my arm on a school trip, having it misdiagnosed for hours, and then after finally diagnosing (both bones snapped so arm was literally hanging down in the middle) they insisted on packing me off back home on the bus for a 2 hour trip rather than agreeing to my mother's request that my grandmother, who lived nearby, collect me and get quicker medical attention.

As outrageous as this might sound, it's not uncommon for children to break bones and for them not to be discovered for even days later, for many reasons, some of which have been mentioned in this post. I absolutely think you should speak to the school but i wouldn't go crazy over it.

How lovely youareall. I generally assume that people aren't lying on these threads, otherwise there's no point reading/responding.

As a former parent governor of my local primary school I would advise that you consciously adopt the approach of 'I don't want this to happen again'. they need to review this incident and draw up a policy for assessing injuries - and perhaps have the local GP in to do some staff training? Also the head should personally apologise to your daughter for their failure. Do contact your parent governor/s and obviously you could contact the LEA to ascertain what their policy/staff training is re assessing injuries at primary school level. (Has the school made a report on this failure?). All the best.