Injury at school

[blondie80]

In school yesterday dd1 (Y8) hurt her hand in P.E. (morning class) playing basketball. She was told to go to the school nurse to have it looked at, the school nurse told it was fine and to go get changed and go to next class. DD has told me she was in tears and complete agony and couldn't move her finger.

I got a call on my way home from work, about 5.30pm, from dd to say she had to go to a&e. When she got to her gran's house after school, her gran took her to the GP, who referred her to a&e.

I got home to a very badly swollen and black finger. I took her to a&e she has fractured her ring finger and is now strapped up.

I rang the school to speak to the nurse about why she hadn't called me in the morning when it had happened and explained the outcome of the trip to a&e. The school nurse in her own words 'I thought it was her little finger' & 'I meant to check up on dd later but forgot'. She also told me that there were 12 injuries yesterday and it's hard to keep track!

So.....
What I'm wondering is, is this normal for secondary school? I mean not to contact parents if there child is hurt, in dd's primary school I had been contacted for a lot less.

Also I feel like making a formal complaint about the nurse? WWYD?

Are you at an independent school with I suspect boarders as well? You must be if there is a nurse permanently on site. IME it is not routine procedure to contact a parent every time a child attends the school San unless you specifically state that you wish to be contacted. Children are also frequently asked to return to the San to have their injuries checked over but many don?t and the nurse may have assumed no news is good news. At this age nurses dont chase children around often large school campus's
The treatment would have been the same whenever she attended A and E but IMO its worth telling the school because nurses are meant to be reflective practitioners and they are fallible so they often like to and also benefit from learning from their mistakes. But I wouldn?t make too much of it.

Hi, thanks for your reply.

DD's school is a controlled grammar school and I do realise that maybe when the nurse first saw her that it perhaps didn't look as bad. I'm not sure if the nurse is permanently there or not. Must find out.

I think the remarks she made when I called this morning, not realising which finger was the fractured one and that she meant to check up but forgot, just left me feeling a little strange, perhaps a bit unprofessional on her part.

DDs ordinary comp. has a "nurse" (I don't know her exact qualifications). She is lovely and is very good with DD1, who can have her moments.
Given DD1 used to fuss and need mothering a bit in Y7 I think it must be hard for school first aid staff to call it right every time.

We have first aiders. Parents are called to come in and asses the situation and it is then their call to take the child to a&e. However if it is something more serious then an ambulance is called straight away with a call to parents to either come straight to school if not too far away or to go straight to hospital.

I would check if it is a qualified nurse or just someone with a "bit" of training childen and in fact adults cannot always tell the difference.
Yes she was unprofessional I agree and again you could politely raise this issue but I still don?t think it?s worth creating a mountain out of a molehill about.

It's not a qualified nurse just one of the admin staff who has had some training.

I was asking DD about it last night and told her I had spoken to the woman. I also said to her perhaps she should have went back to se her later as it was still painful - DD said she did go down after lunch and was sent on her way again!

I was asked to collect ds from his school a few weeks ago as the First Aider suspected a broken thumb. Several hours of waiting in A&E later, the A&E Dr decided it was a broken thumb (this is with x-rays avilable to him). At the Children's Hospital 2 days later, the Consultant decided it wasn't broken.
Just saying, it's not always that easy to tell.

I think this is a bit odd, especially as she made two trips to the medical room. Even as a first aider (currently lapsed), I would suspect a fracture if a joint could not be moved. Even on an unlucky day with lots of injuries, I'd have thought it should have been an obvious one for review at A&E as a possible fracture.

It might be worth ascertaining what level of first aid qualification this staff member has.

Thanks edith,

I have tried to leave it, but there is still something nagging about the situation that doesn't sit right. iykwim.

I've worked out what was nagging at me.

It's not fair of the school to rely on one first aider, who may not be that competent. It's not fair on her either, if she has duties which she is not really up to fulfilling. It's definitely not fair on every single pupil in the school (not just your DD) if there is only one overloaded first aider - as next time it might be she misses something far more serious than possibility of fracture when there is an immobile joint.

I think I'd be seeking to find out what the level of first aider cover is - in terms of numbers (for when there are a dozen pupils to be attended to) and level if training, and I would be using the example of what was missed here as an example of how badly the school could be exposed if they do not put this right.

A few years ago my DS came home from school very upset and in a lot of pain. His finger was swollen with bleeding under the nail and after a visit to A&E, we discovered it was broken.

He had trapped it in the hinge side of a fire door when someone slammed the door. This had happened at lunchtime. So I went into school the next day to ask why no one had contacted me. It turned out they had been ringing the wrong boys parents ( not even the same surname!) and DS had been sent back to lessons.

We moved him soon after.....

There are injuries that are simply not worth the cost of x raying, broken toes/fingers/noses, it often makes no difference whether you confirm a break or not, and the cost to the NHS is silly, when it is so unnessessary. A hurt finger can be strapped, if that helps, without the NHS shelling out hundreds in doctors/ appointments/ xrays, to confirm if it is broken or not. ( i have a strapped finger at the moment, hence ofgy typing, may be broken. DS had a suspected broken toe last year, and we just left it and it sorted itself out. Did the same with DDs nose, (at least the gp did) some years ago, wasn't worththe cost of xraying.)

Yup very normal for secondary. Boys PE being the worst. We've ad 2 thatbive written to school about - firstly ds hurt his neck in rugby in year 8. the looked at him told him to stay on the pitch and forgot to review him before e went home on the bus - almost fainting in pain. We went to a&e and he was spinal border at the wanted to cut his clothes off !!!! Off most of the season having physio...

Second time - year 9. Calf muscle tear. Had a sad call saying he was sat on the wall outside school nd he couldn't walk to the bus- would I collect him ... A again they'd tipped him off the mini bus and the fool had hobbled a few yards a realised he couldn't walk. That his fault too I know.

But I'm sure with kids there is a lot of " battle adrenalin" going on and they think they arent really as hurt as they are - staff need to be more careful.

At state schools most people assessing injuries/illness have little or no training; probably only a basic first aid course. IME they tend to over react and probably justifiably becaue they worry about getting it wrong and send children home or to A and E dept for trivial reasons. At my DS1s school they are not even able to give a couple of paracetamol. To accurately assess injuries/minor illnesses you need to be in that environment on a regular basis and either be a doctor or a qualified nurse/emergency nurse practioners with loads of relevant experience.

I think if your dd went back to see the first aider (I'm really not sure why you or the school would refer to a first aider and member of the admin staff as a nurse) then I think she should have been taken more seriously.

I appreciate that a broken finger isn't the end of the world but the level of care shown towards your daughter was inadequate. I would write a gentle letter of concern and have a discussion with your daughter. I would guide my daughter if ever she felt in too much pain or too unwell to continue to go to the office and ask them to call her mother so that she could go home. I would outline that conversation with your dd in the letter and make it clear that should you daughter ever ask for that to happen in the future that the school makes sure it does happen.

I agree it's the going back and not being taken seriously that would bother me.

When I was 12 one of my friends fell down a flight of stairs at school and all her weight went through her wrist (she'd put her hand out to protect her head). I was sitting in the "sick room" (big cupboard with two camp beds in) with her whilst the first aider (a lovely teacher with some sort of first aid qualification) called a doctor who sent a paramedic out because my friend kept passing out from the pain and I think they were worried about her head. They had just left us in the room - I took her rings and bracelets off her raised her arm gently onto her chest so that it was elevated.

When the paramedic came he told the teacher that "too often staff are so busy calling parents about someone more injured they forget to do the basic bits like elevation and that makes our job so much easier when the first few steps have been done properly". The teacher looked a bit sheepish but didn't give me ANY credit.

I understand it's difficult for school medical staff, but also it's difficult to be the pupil telling the staff they haven't done the right thing.

At that age I would have expected the member of staff to give your dd some of the responsibility and asked her to come back after lunch if it was no better and then at that point called you. Fingers are tricky even for qualified medical professionals never mind school staff which to me is all the more reason they should (after a reasonable time) recommend a professional assessment.