Asthma Treatment in School

Male: A lot of times kids get medicine in school and they have bunch of inhalers and unlike other devices – it is in the locker and the nurse takes it out. So this may not be an ideal practice is it?

Dr. Marcus: It is quite important that the person responsible for administering the medication be aware of how to judge if there is sufficient medication left. Having a device in the school at a grandparent’s house, at a baby sitter’s is important to allow for medicine to be administered at each of these sites. Probably the person responsible must keep track of the doses.

Male: One of the problems of giving medicine to school if a nurse is monitoring it, there are some excellent school nurses and there are some not so good. So the kid is having an attack in school. You would not want the nurse to replace the emergency room would you?

Dr. Marcus: Not at all. The nurse is a starting point in the therapy, not the endpoint. The school nurse can be trained to judge whether the child is having true breathing difficulty from their asthma or not, can give the first dose of medication but then should make sure that that information is transmitted to the parent and the physician so that proper followup can be arranged. If the patient does not respond properly to that first dose of medication, the patient should be immediately brought to a physician’s attention either in your physician’s office or directly to the emergency room depending on the severity of the episode. The nurse in the schools is your starting point. Not the final endpoint.



Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services