Administering non prescibed medication - is this common or overkill?

[Cicatrice]

The nursery we send DS to has changed their medication policy.

They will no longer have a blanket permission for giving Calpol - must have written permission on the day, must be in sachet, will only give 5ml even if parent authorised more.

Will not accept a child in the first 24 hours of an antibiotics course.

Will no longer have blanket permission for applying suncream/nappy cream - must have written permission . (I'm assuming that must be every day too otherwise not really different to blanket permission)

I can get along with written permission for Calpol etc on the day but not happy that they seem to have unilaterally decided on 5ml. And the suncream thing just seems absurd. If I cream him up first thing in the morning, it will still need to be reapplied later in the day. Do other places make you do a form every day for sun cream/sudacreme?

Or is my nursery over reacting?

The Calpol policy at my nursery is similar. I had to give them a doctor-prescribed bottle of infant paracetomol, not just one bought off the shelf. If they have to give it to him during the day, they call me first to ask permission, will only give him the dosage stated on the bottle, and then I need to sign when I collect him.

The suncream/nappy cream rule does seem a bit over the top, if you need to complete a form every sunny day! At my nursery we just have to bring in our own sun cream, but no written permissions. Surely they will not let a child sunburn if the form is forgotten or the weather changes mid-day!

What you describe is pretty standard.

The policy changed so Calpol (and similar) would not be given at all unless prescribed (which is a PITA, and a complete waste of NHS drugs bill); but they modified it a bit to cover some medical conditions (typically accident, not illness: eg my DS's 1st couple of days in plaster after doc had said "of course he's fine to go to school, just give him some Calpol if he's achy). They don't want to collude in keeping an ill and possibly infectious child.

Suncream: we only had to write once a term about suncream. When they go to school, you may well find the child is expected to apply their own - yes even in reception.

OK. Thanks for your replies.

I'm going to pursue the suncream though. They can't have thought it through, in summer they will have to get a signed form from every parent every day. Thats not making anybody's life easier.

The suncream one is a little odd, but the sudacrem counts as a medication, and we can only apply it with parents permission and I believe a signed medical form to say we can apply it (from the parents, not the dr). We don't give calpol unless prescribed, but parents can come in and top up themselves if they want to same with antibiotics. Actually that reminds me to check our policy on that, I think we are reviewing it (we have shared facilities, and not sure we can store the medicine in the fridge- not our fridge technically... tho we can use it for milk).

On the calpol thing, if the child is unwell and needs repeated doses of paracetamol to stay, then they are usually too ill to be there, obviously there are exceptions!

This was an interesting post and dc's nursery has now adopted a much more common sense approach and app this was on account of new guidlines issued by Ofsted around Oct/Nov. We had to provide calpol that had been prescribed and basically they wouldn't administer without a prescription label. We sign each time it is administered but don't fill out a new medicine form except when we have to provide a new bottle. (they record best before dates etc on the med forms). We do have to fill out a new form for each set of antibiotics even if they have had it before but that is fair enough.
Anyway getting back to my point about Ofsted! They issued revised guidance and clarification on medicines (which our nursery told us about and apparantly prescribed can mean from a doctor, pharmacist, nurse etc. Much more common sense and easy to understand and impliment. Ofsted quote "If a parent or carer wants you to give their child medicine, you must get the parent?s or carer?s written permission and instructions showing the dose, how often it is given and so on. If these instructions are from a doctor and exceed the dose recommended on the packaging you may want the parent to confirm in writing their agreement to you dong this.
This applies to each and every medicine a parent wants you to give.
It does not apply to every time you give the medication. For example, you will need permission at the start of a course of antibiotics, but not for every time you give each dose of the antibiotic during the course of the treatment. You should keep this information in a safe place.
?Prescribe? and ?prescription?
You must take account of the guidance set out in the Statutory Framework. This states that ?medicines must not usually be administered unless they have been prescribed for that child by a doctor, dentist, nurse or pharmacist?.
When we use the word ?prescribe? we mean medicine that is recommended." All depends on each nurseries policys I suppose but you can access the document here
www.ofsted.gov.uk/.../Giving%20medication%20in%20childcare.pdf

Hope that helps