Accident at school

ixwood

What did you expect to happen? It's a broken arm. It happens! They let you know and you dealt with it.

Getting stressed over the whole thing is pointless.

beefcarrot

grey_lady wrote: »

I dont get this, how on earth can people post that even if a child is bleeding and has bone protruding that they cant drive them to hosptial as they dont have insurance!!!! (i have never been told by insurance company that i cant carry passengers under the age of 16 on a normal licence on a private policy btw) and then claim that they have the child's best interest at heart!!!

If a child in my care needed medical attention and the quickest way
of getting that was to drive them myself to hosptial then thats what i would do - this is political correctness gone mad imho. But of course if moving them (seemed risky to the child) or driving just wasnt an option then of course call an ambulance and let the trained professionals
decide if it was an emergency. But to not to help a child in pain because you're worried about red tape.... (ggrrrr)

I think things have been taken out of context here. Were there to be a compound fracture, I don't think there would be a school in the land that wouldn't call an ambulance. We're talking about less cut and dried examples.

As for the insurance part, I reiterate what has been said before. God forbid the teacher's car was in an accident on the way to A&E, but if it were, the insurance could be invalid, with serious repercussions for all involved.

shirlgirl2004

I'm not surprised the OP was stressed at the situation, I would have been. I assume that she showed the distress and also displayed her feelings that an ambulance should have been called and that is why the school have requested a meeting. Additionally because the equiptment is new I guess they are hoping to avoid some sort of parent protest that the new playground euipment is taken away.

FWIW it sounds as if the school did what they could. With a 5 year old especially, it would be hard to tell if the arm were broken in most instances. If the school had called an ambulance it would probably not have arrived before the mother anyway and if it had, most 5 year olds would be distressed by having to go in one without a parent.

I hope OP and her son both recover from their traumatic experience quickly.

Aspiring

Kaz2904 wrote: »

- - - - - - -
It's horrible being at work when your child injures themselves because it cements the guilt that us Mums are handed to us when we leave the maternity unit.

No one handed me any "guilt" when I left the maternity ward (strange thing to say).

It's horrible when your child is hurt and you are not there irrespective of whether you are working, studying, shopping, or if they are in the care of a babysitter while you are on a night out. Equally, it's horrible when your child is hurt and you are there.

OP:
One of my children banged their head on a bench during school hours, well, in a PE class, in front of the teacher. No call from the school.
Child came home at usual time with rather large bump on forehead (about the size of a goose egg) and child said: "Teacher says you must take me to hospital to get it checked out" :rolleyes:

Different child, different school: I receive a phone call from the school secretary telling me I need to get to the school as my child had "suffered a spinal injury during rugby" - now, you can see how that sounds.
Race to get him, imagining the very very worst from "spinal injury". Discover child sat outside secretary's office, laughing and joking with a teacher. He did develop a teen weeny bruise the next day on his buttock. I did write to the headmaster to comment on the use of overly emotive language when calling parents into school. :rolleyes:

Good luck with your meeting on Monday and I hope your son makes a full and fast recovery.

themaccas

I'm glad the school has called a meeting it gives the op the opportunity to thank the school for acting and calling her in a timely manner.

I hope your son is recovering well.

andyrules

grey_lady wrote: »

To the OP, of course the school should have seeked medical advice immediately rather than called you and expected you to deal with it from afar. Broken arms are not always straight forward. I wonder if you also thought this, hence your post?

But..

I dont get this, how on earth can people post that even if a child is bleeding and has bone protruding that they cant drive them to hosptial as they dont have insurance!!!! (i have never been told by insurance company that i cant carry passengers under the age of 16 on a normal licence on a private policy btw) and then claim that they have the child's best interest at heart!!!

If a child in my care needed medical attention and the quickest way
of getting that was to drive them myself to hosptial then thats what i would do - this is political correctness gone mad imho. But of course if moving them (seemed risky to the child) or driving just wasnt an option then of course call an ambulance and let the trained professionals
decide if it was an emergency. But to not to help a child in pain because you're worried about red tape.... (ggrrrr)


And the person who posted, who would look after the rest of the class whilst a teacher took one child to hospital, ROFL, teachers dont spend every school hour in the class room teaching, a lot of their time is taken up with prep and im sure that a teacher could be spared from paperwork for an hour or two, deputy and head teachers commonly dont have any classroom duties so surely could step in....

Please read my post 74 about the difficulty for untrained (and trained:rolleyes:) staff to diagnose an 'injury', especially with no equipment! Do you know how many children attend the school 'first aider'/secretary/TA/teacher in the corridor every playtime sobbing with pain/perceived pain/very short-term pain/not much pain/shock/fright/indignity/fallen out with friend/..... how can the adult know something may be wrong? Should schools send every bang/fall to A&E, just in case?

Re travelling- I transport children occasionally in the course of my job, and have to have extra insurance for this. To do otherwise is illegal. Are you saying you transport children without insurance for your work, or were you referring to your own family/friends? They are two entirely different situations for insurance.

Use of teaching/ancillary staff - in an emergency a school would pull together very smoothly and double up classes etc, but almost every breaktime?? For a compound fracture, I would not hesitate to ring for an ambulance - there are too many serious complications to put one of these in a car, plus effective pain relief and immobilisation would be needed asap.

I'm glad the general consensus on here is that the school have acted correctly, because from the information we have - it has and to turn it into a circus would be wrong and damaging to the bit of freedom to run and climb children have left.

ellissa

You are clearly very upset about your son's accident and that is understandable. I hope he is on the mend. However, once the emotions are less heightened, I'd try to think about this reasonably - at any point was your son in danger? - did the school act in the best interests of your son within school policy and procedure?

In an ideal world, I'm sure every teacher would love to give the child in this situation some (child-friendly) pain killers and take them to A&E. However, in this day and age, schools have to consider their staff also. Unfortunately there are far too many parents out there who would take the school (and individual teachers) to the cleaners for the smallest thing even if the school acted in the child's best interests.

If the school had administered pain relief (without consent) and your son had a reaction, how would you feel? Or what about if they gave him painkillers and then when you got him to A&E they said they couldn't operate / treat him because of the pain killers?

If a teacher had took your son in their car and phoned you to meet them at A&E but an accident occured on the journey and the teacher was not insured to carry pupils (you DO need speacial insurance for this), how would you react? Or even if there was no accident on the way but you found out a teacher had taken your child in their car with no insurance? And if they had got to the hospital without a parent, would they have treated your son - No, unless you gave signed permission (This happened to me at my previous employment. Child had suspected fractured finger. We sat in A&E for over an hour until mum arrived!). If they had taken him to A&E, he'd have been sat there until you got there - in the same pain, just more upset because of the surroundings I expect.

If the school had not informed you until the end of the day and then told you to go to A&E, what would you think then?

Ok, so an ambulance could have been called but was it actually necessary? The experience of going in an ambulance without mum/dad could have upset your son further.

So he had to wait a while until you got there - was he safe? yes. Did his condition worsen? I assume not. Was he put in uneccessary danger? No. Did he suffer more pain and upset than he would have in an ambulance? Ok, so maybe more pain. A suspected fracture (except compound) does not warrant an ambulance and if the school contacted NHS Direct / doctors then they would have probably said an ambulance was not neccessary.

I'm not having a go and I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm just asking you to think rationally and think how the situation could have gone if the school did take a number of different actions. I understand your emotion and upset, you probably feel guilty that your son was left in pain for so long because you were so far away. It's not your fault. He is safe and, I hope, recovering well.

seven-day-weekend

The OP could always have rung her parents, who she said lived close to the school, if she was that worried about him not going to hospital instantly.

I feel the school acted well within the bounds of reasonableness.

I hope the little boy is well on the mend now.

blue_monkey_2

The school need written permission from a parent to transport a child in their car, and they DO need special insurance - I was told this today - and if they had the permission would also need booster seats to transort them.

The parent would need to give permssion at the hospital to treat/x-ray the little boy and the school do not have Parental Consent to do this so he would not have been able to have treatment anyway as it was not an emergency (life or death) situation.

Would be interesting to hear what the school had to say at the meeting today.

dizziblonde

The transport thing is what teachers are now getting slammed for. If an accident happened and we were taking that risk running a kid to hospital in our cars without insurance etc - the LEA would hang us out to dry, the school would hang us out to dry and I'm sure the teaching council would as well (even if found not guilty of accusations there - the hearings get publicized and names dragged through the mud in the papers - often for incredibly spurious things or vendettas by bullying heads)... not to mention being sued and everything else. We'd lose our jobs, our ability to work as a teacher, and in this economic mess we'd probably have minimal chance of getting another job in an alternative career.

THAT'S why we act the way we do, staying within the rules - as we get completely slaughtered the second we put a HAIR out of the limits of the hundreds of bits of guidance we get thrust upon us. Half of the time it's going against our own instincts - we don't WANT to see a kid hurt and be unable to run them to help - but at the same time, we have to protect ourselves, our livelihoods and our families as well. It's not a nice world, we don't enjoy it, we don't do it out of callousness or a love of officialdom - we simply can (and would) lose our entire career if anything went wrong.

Like I said before - damned in the media, on internet forums and screamed at by parents if we dont... damned in the media, on internet forums and hung out to dry by officialdom and the legal profession if we do. The first thing I got told on my teaching course was "whatever you do it will be wrong - get used to it" and it was incredibly apt advice (the second thing was that "you will get nits, worms and everything else going" and most of that was true as well!).