School officials in Florida’s Volusia County School are insisting that a school nurse was perfectly correct in refusing to give a boy his inhaler during an asthma attack because a medical release form was not signed by a parent. By the time the mother arrived at the school, her son was passed out on the floor. She says that the nurse watched as her son, Michael Rudi, 17, collapsed.
The school dean found the inhaler in its original packaging with the student’s name and directions for its use. He seized the inhaler because of the absence of a form. When the boy began to have trouble breathing the mother was called to come into school. It is not clear why, if they could reach the mother, they could not get telephonic approval. More importantly, with the boy having breathing problems, the school insisted that it was still more important to get a form signed than help the child. Rudi is quoted as saying “[a]s soon as we opened up the door, we saw my son collapsing against the wall on the floor of the nurse’s office while she was standing in the window of the locked door looking down at my son, who was in full-blown asthma attack.”
Faced with this horrific situation, the Director of Student Health Services, Cheryl Selesky, still insists it was the parents’ fault for not being sure a new signed form was on file this year. There may have been a failure in supplying such a form, but that pales in comparison to the callous and irresponsible attitude to this teenager who was in obvious medical need. The school was previously made aware of the boy’s medical condition and yet stood there with an inhaler and an unsigned form in hand . . . but concluded the form was the more pressing matter.
It is also not clear why 911 was not called. The parents have filed child endangerment charges against the nurse. They also may want to consider a civil lawsuit against the school. Since the school appears primarily motivated by legal rather than medical considerations, a torts action may serve to concentrate the mind of officials.
Source: Orlando
Woosty,
You go girl because you are being both reasonable and responsible in your remarks. You caused me to stop and rethink. More facts are needed.
also;
“This is not the first time I have been disgusted, embarrassed and ashamed at the actions of my fellow nurses, but it’s probably right up in the top three.” Karla Ramirez
“…..had she simply done the decent thing and worried more about the child than some vaporous, remote, and unlikely threat to her job or her pocketbook. ” Mespo
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the language contained in the above….decent? disgusted? ashamed?
……really? That’ll certainly make it easy for people to get to the bottom of the issue without spreading the fear, creating a mob, inspiring violence.
Words are energy, they conduct. What are you conducting?
Woosty:
I don’t see your point. Throwing someone under the bus means excoriating someone unjustifiably.”
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It also means excoriating someone prematurely…..which is a frequent precurser to ‘unjustifiably’.
More facts please.
mespo727272
1, May 25, 2012 at 11:07 am
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I am also a nurse Mespo. I have been fired for not towing the managements corporate line. I have seen others get and been burned by special interests.
I don’t see that waiting for all the facts is an extreme stance.
If the nurse is found to be at fault then so be it but my point is that everyone is assuming that they know what actually happened when maybe we don’t. What was the content of the phone call? Did the nurse involve the principle and did he tell her to NOT act? What are her reasons for not acting?
If I am ‘playing’ devils advocate…Good for ME!!!! (on this blog in make believe land….)
I’m with Karla on this one.
Woosty:
I don’t see your point. Throwing someone under the bus means excoriating someone unjustifiably. Karla Ramirez, as a nurse, is in the BEST position to judge the school nurse’s actions/inactions based on the available facts and the standard of care of her profession. You’ve taken an awfully extreme line on this case since we’ve shown you that there are a myriad of protections for the nurse under existing law had she simply done the decent thing and worried more about the child than some vaporous, remote, and unlikely threat to her job or her pocketbook. The irony is that she has jeopardized both by her inaction in the face of a bona fide health crisis to a child. I rarely advocate violence as an appropriate response, but a slap across the face by the child’s mother would get no more than a ho-hum from me should this nurse complain. If she had an ounce of shame in her she wouldn’t even do that.
idealist are you talking about where you live?
As for red-faced screamers—-there aren’t any. But we do have fathers at games. one or two make headlines but suits—-no way.
Karla Ramirez
1, May 25, 2012 at 8:57 am
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I’m sure it feels really helpful to be just 1 more willing to throw the nurse under the bus.
I’M WITH WOOSTY. BEST ALL AROUND.
1, May 25, 2012 at 9:37 am
My shrink said that a nation run by fear is doomed. The question is when and how. And he’s no doomer.
But I’m not the first to say this, but it bears repeating.
Here, BTW, anyone can, upon reading a newspaper article, ring the police and demand an investigation of a presumptive crime. And it will be done.
But sue each other. Naw, seldom.
Mike A —
God post, but since you wrote at a level exceeding 7th grading reading ability, don’t expect any of the right-wing tort reformers to be able to understand that making state institutions exempt from most lawsuits and placing severe limitations on damage recovery actually creates incentive to allow folks to die — where is anyone gonna find a competent lawyer to sue them?
SlingTrebuchet
1, May 25, 2012 at 10:10 am
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hahahaha!
exactly!
no, I couldn’t. But my point is that I don’t have all the facts….the scenario I would be ‘judging’ is , without all the facts, one that is supplemented with a personal fiction not what ultimately went down. I am therefor going to advocate that it is easy to jump on people before knowing everything, thereby inflaming opinion and creating a fearful environment in which people have to practice….thereby creating even MORE scenarios like this….which is just ridiculous and ultimately self-defeating on a societal level….it’s really easy to get all up and nasty when kids are involved….but that kind of emotional reaction is what causes these situations in the first place. I have friends that teach and tell me stories about how uber-nasty parents have forced thm to change a priveledged childs grade rather than let the teachers maintain thier own classes fairly. This is the over culture right now and it has been created by the aggressive willingness to hang at the drop of a hat so that some screamy red faced I’ll sue your ass off cretin can get what he wants or ‘thinks’ he is entitled too…at the expense of someone like this nurse….who probably couldn’t do the right thing NO MATTER WHAT SHE DID in this instance. I don’t want to live on the Island of the Lord of the Flies. The legal community has been sitting back on its haunches for years watching these types of scenarios play out and swooping in to be the hangman and make a buck….and divorcing themselves from all liability. Meanwhile, parents scream ‘I’ll sue your ass off’ at little league games. And strangely enough, there always seems to be a law firm willing to take on THOSE ridiculous lawsuits but when a lawyer or law firm or judge is clearly over the line? Not so much. So no, I agree there may have been a ball dropping but no, I absolutely am not ready to hang this nurse when so many other people were involved…including the 17 year old, and I don’t have all the facts.
SwM,
The pleasures of fish. You know that all salmon havr parasites, which either freezing 24H before eating raw, or cooking a point is OK. I love it both ways and cured or smoked. Supplies of wild fish diminish here. Lake fish and Baltic fish are still to be found. We have a lovely flat fish fully in class with Dover Sole, I think.
Ate at a japanese driven (mom/pop) sushi place. Had chige, 2 large mussels in miso, followed by twe VERY LARGE MUSSELS (ALL IN SHELLS) with oodles of salmon and kimchi in a soup. Cheap for here. 12 dollars. Small lunch sushi was 10 dollars….but who wants sushi when the other is to be had.
People
This is the world that you are sliding into.
This is what happened in that school
Woosty,
“I agree, except that I don’t.”
You don’t agree that all the school personnel involved in the situation were at fault?
I was a “public servant” once. I know I couldn’t have watched a child with a life-threatening medical emergency like this and not have done anything to help him. I know our school nurse would not have stood there and watched a child struggle for breath and not have given him his inhaler or called 911.
The nurse or someone at the school should have called 911. Could you stand there and watch a child struggling for his breath and not do anything to help him?
“It looks like all school personnel involved in this sad situation were at fault.”
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I agree, except that I don’t. I have had to practice in this state of uber-aggressives who have become mostly reactionary to the knowledge that there is a big bad wolf out there in the shape of the corporate law firm…willing to to do, say and spend anything to gain ‘reputation points’ at the expense of some poor public servants livlihood. No one can practice rationally in this environment. When fear rules the mind shuts down. That is 1 reason that terrorism has an initial element of success. I wasn’t there, I don’t know enuff real facts re the case to bully hump the nurse, I do know that she will be screwed no matter what really happened. The common sense that nurses brought to the table has been totally undermined by this system that is mostly marvellous at making…..more bullies.
And you can tout the reasonableness of the current courtly state of the law all you like, it is ultimately just another patina of poop when the reality of how and to whom the law is applied is examined. $$$$$$$
Excerpt from the article:
“He [the student] said the school dean found his inhaler during a search of his locker last Friday. The inhaler was still in its original packaging — complete with his name and directions for its use; however, the school took it away because his mother hadn’t signed the proper form for him to have it.
“School leaders called Sue Rudi when her son started having trouble breathing. She rushed to the office and was taken back to the nurse’s office by school administrators and they discovered the teen on the floor.”
*****
It looks like all school personnel involved in this sad situation were at fault. Not one of them did anything to help the boy. It wasn’t just the nurse who had a “brain freeze.”
This case and some of the comments which suggest culpability on the part of the parents point up the very human flaw of putting form over substance and going down all manner of meandering thought trails in the process. The point of the law is to protect citizens. The same can be said for the policy of requiring signed forms for student medication. Our legal and administrative processes are designed to effect the goal of protection, This is especially true in the case of children whom the law presumes cannot protect themselves.When an event in the extremis like this occurs anyone acting in good faith and in furtherance of the goal is protected by all manner of laws including most states’ good Samaritan law. In this case there are a host of state sovereign immunity laws which also protect both school officials and the nurse. These legal “free passes” from negligence are designed to encourage action to save lives.
It is incomprehensible to me that an adult would watch a child die knowing full well that they could (and are duty bound by the precepts of their profession to) help but still doing nothing. If the civil law of Florida means anything, it means bringing this to the attention of a the citizens of Florida to see if they can think straight and hold this nurse and school accountable.
The nurse swore an oath to the preservation of human life when she was graduated from nursing school.
Such an oath to preserve life, overrides and supercedes policy, procedure and legislation.
I’ve been a nurse for twenty years.
This is not the first time I have been disgusted, embarrassed and ashamed at the actions of my fellow nurses, but it’s probably right up in the top three.