To think they should have called an ambulance

[JunosRevenge]

My 15yo DS witnessed Boy 1 headbutt Boy 2 at school today. He said that Boy 2 collapsed and was unresponsive for a few minutes. My DS tried to rouse Boy 2 and took him to the medical room. When he 'came to', Boy 2 said that he couldn't remember the headbutt.

DS said that school didn't call an ambulance. That just doesn't seem right to me - AIBU?

NC for this one in case anyone else from DS's school is on MN...

I'm going to ring school in the morning to find out what happened.

My DS isn't worried that Boy 1 will start on him. DS is a sprinter - he's pretty good at staying out of trouble. He said that Boy 2 was still in the medical room at lunchtime - incident was just after morning break . DS is upset that other bastards boys caused what could have been a catastrophic event for both Boy 2 AND Boy 1. Boy 1 is adopted and has a social worker. I feel sorry for them both tbh.

Something similar happened to me at school. A boy kicked a an external fire door and it hit me on the forehead, I fell down and one of my friends thought I lost consciousness for a sec or two.

We went to a teacher and I was sept to medical and given ice. I had an GCSE exam in 20 mins, which I did and aced, I was sat at the back & wasn't allowed to put my head down when I finished the exam early.

When I got home, my parents had no idea to expect me to have a massive lump on my head... school wouldn't send me home but I assumed they'd call home, but nope. TBH I was pretty shocked, even at the time, ambulances were a pretty regular sight at school (mostly PE accidents).

This was in 2012, so not long ago.

My understanding with head injuries is that if the person is loosing consciousness, they should always be checked on.
Same if they don't loose consciousness but feel nausea or have a headache, blurry vision etc...

Whilst I wouldn't hav expected them to call an ambulance, I would have expected them to ring the parents and to have advised the parents to take him to A&E.

Unless boy2 was then sent back into the classroom, it's hard to say what has actually happened.

Sounds like the school were monitoring boy 2 which is good. I would doubt that the school will give you any information if you call. Why don’t you just trust that your DS told them what happened and they have dealt with it?

Xpost

Wondering why boy2 wasn't at home by lunchtime TBH...

Monitoring??
Unless the person who was keeping an eye on him also had some medical training, I'm not sure what sort of monitoring they could have done. There are some specific signs and symptoms to look for and I personally wouldn't trust 'someone' from school to do that.

It is entirely possible that the school could not get hold of the parents of boy 2.

I would assume the first aid person would know what to look for with this type of injury. We actually have no idea if boy 2 was badly injured or not.

(I'm a GP and ex-A&E doctor)

He should definitely have gone to A&E if he lost consciousness. The main concern is an extradural haematoma/haemorrhage - the classic 'walk and die' injury - people seem fine but collapse and often die as swelling around the brain increases. An ambulance would not have been unreasonable. Please tell the school that their failure to send him to A&E was incredibly irresponsible.

Info on head injuries here. Any HI with loss of consciousness is considered serious.

Honestly, schools make me at times. One minute they're refusing to give a paracetamol tablet without a prescription, the next they're leaving child potentially to die.

Well monitoring is part of the first aid training.

Believe me, it is difficult to get an ambulance to come these days. We had a student with a heart conflation having a potential heart attack. After 10 minutes (we are very close to the hospital), and no ambulance, we called 999 again and said she was not breathing and try were there in 4 minutes.

An ambulance will not come unless someone is dying or so badly injured that they can't be moved (like the kid with a broken leg on the school field).

You are expected to get to hospital otherwise under your own steam.

An ambulance is entirely reasonable in that situation. My boy tripped and knocked himself out when he was little, I phoned for an ambulance. I apologised to the ambulance crew and they told me that it was the right thing to do as head injuries can turn nasty so quickly. If I'd have driven him and he'd started fitting it would have been much worse.