School forgot to give medication

[Popsicle82646]

Daughter comes home from school and says that they forgot to give her her dose of antibiotics today at school.

When dad collected the teacher said oh I'm sorry, and turned to my daughter and said 'Did you remind any of the staff today to give it to you?'

Now I'm a pretty chill mum, and whilst not the end of the world as she's had the second dose when she got home, It's kind of not the point.

AIBU for being annoyed they turned the blame to my child asking if she reminded them (7 yo)?!

I'm inclined to just leave it but part of me wonders if that had been a diabetes medication for example that had been forgotten it might have been different outcome.

WWYD?

My child’s schools has something on the administering medication form we sign to say they will not guarantee the medication will be given but will try their best. Might your child’s school have the same?

for a long standing medication there will be a care plan in place so there really isn’t any comparison between diabetics and a one off course of antibiotics.

Shouldn't have happened but think carefully before you complain. School do not have to give medication. They could refuse and insist you attend to administer it. They are doing you a favour.

Wake her up.

The school will not find themselves responsible for missed medication. Complaining will go nowhere.

My son is type 1 diabetic and a lunch dose was missed. No insulin showing in his pump, and a graph of high blood glucose. Panel of governors found this wasn't an issue. The head even claimed insulin isn't needed for pizza.

Arseholes then pleaded at disability discrimination hearing it isn't their role to supervise any insulin doses for a 7 yr old.

Department of education then said school provided 'compelling evidence' that he had taken insulin. But couldn't provide a copy of it.

( Apologies for the rant. )

My son’s primary school wont administer ABXs- we have to arrange for somebody to go in and give it.

Inhalers etc are in school and can be administered.

My son is 8 and would definitely be able to remember to ask the staff to give his ABXs.

Insulin would not be forgotten as a staff member would be trained to administer it every day, the child would have an insulin passport and a care plan in school. It’s a critical medication.

You could try ringing the office at lunchtime to ensure the dose has been given for peace of mind? I couldn’t get worked up at the dose being missed or my daughter being asked if they’d reminded the teacher.

That sounds very worrying bit i thought the pump was supposed to administer insulin automatically ,did the CGM not alarm to to alert the staff?

@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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I do feel Mums net has turned into a place where healthy debates and discussions can't take place anymore but more of a way to sit behind a keyboard and type rude and sarcastic comments that are not needed.

I wasn't comparing my daughter's antibiotics being missed with the severity of a child's insulin being missed

I was saying if my child's antibiotics have been missed then it COULD have quite easily happened to a child's insulin medication and the consequences would have been much greater like you are all pointing out in this post.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

@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.

Because she didn't tell my DH 🤦🏻‍♀️
The only reason the missed dose of antibiotics was brought to his attention was because he asked to collect them for over the weekend at which point the teachers face dropped and said oh I'm sorry she hasn't had them today.