Administrating Medication

[Guest]

HI

 

the owner of the nursery brought a newsletter from NDNA in today which was all about administrating medication to children. it is May 2009 so upto date and basically says the following re calpol

 

FAQ " do i have to get written permission for each and every medication or can i use a blanket consent for 'calpol' to give in an emergency"

 

Answer: No, you can not use a blanket consent for any medication. Each and every medication given has to have written consent by the parent. This means every individual day the child needs for example teething gel, you should ask the parent to fill out a new medication form. This is to ensure no details have changed and in cases when the child may have had a dose before their session, you have written confirmation to follow to avoid an overdose. ofsted state you can use one form for the whole course of antibiotics, however it is still good practice to fill a form out every day as the parent may not have given a dose at home at the same time each day, or may have given no dose at all.

 

FAQ: How can i give medication in an emergency if the parent needs to sign prior to any medication being given?

 

Answer: if this is a real emergency you must call medical assistance, for example an ambulance. The parent should have signed an emergency medical treatment permission slip when they first registered their child. This allows medical staff to perform medical treatment on the child in the absense of the parent. If the child has a high temperature or appears to need medication during the nursery day, their parents should be telephoned. remember, you are not medically trained and therefore not in a position to decide whether or not the child needs medication. The legal requirment safeguards you to ensure you are not placed in this position. The parents should collect the child or decide for themselves upon seeing the child whether or not they need medication. Remember if the child is ill they should not be in nursery.

 

 

okay, so in our setting the following happens:

 

any medication children need is documented (NDNA article states that parents should fill in the form) and parents sign to say when they need it and then when medication is given (senior staff give, and a witness is present) they sign form, and parents sign at end of day. repeated each day the child is on that medication.

 

re calpol, we do have blanket consent at present on the registration form, something along the lines of " in the event of your child taking unwell at nursery with a high temperature do you consent to us administrating calpol whilst we wait for you to arrange collection of your child", parents then specify yes or no.

when we give calpol we always ring parents PRIOR to giving the calpol, even tho we have blanket consent, we do this to ensure a dose has not been given at home prior to nursery, we also ring them because they will need to collect their child. it seems we can not have blanket consent anymore.

 

someone please reasure me that we are not the only nursery that has blanket consent for calpol in emergencies.

 

i remember when the EYFS first suggested that nurseries could not keep an 'emergency supplyof calpol' for just in case. this changed, but now it seems with this new information, having that emergency supply of calpol is pointless if we can not give it.

 

some of our parents work an hour away and don't have contacts nearby, i know they would not be happy to have a child of their's with an raging temperature left for an hour without any calpol.

 

what are your thoughts on all of this.

 

Dawn

[lynned55]

I have always understood that 'blanket' consent is a total no no becuase how do you know if the parent has not already given calpol?

[Guest]

ofsted, one year ago, were fine with the blanket consent because we always rang parents before hand...

 

i am so confused!

 

 

 

 

I have always understood that 'blanket' consent is a total no no becuase how do you know if the parent has not already given calpol?

[Upsy Daisy]

I too have always used the blanket consent along with a phone call to confirm that the parent wishes me to adminster calpol. If we can't do that what happens with children who are prone to febrile convulsions? If the parents are some distance away the the child could be very hot by the time they arrive and then is takes time for the calpol to work. That doesn't seem right.

[Cait]

We don't have blanket consent except for emergency first aid, which doesn't cover the administration of medicine. Any medicing for a child is given in a named bottle on the day and administered as per written instructions in the medication book and signed by parents before and at the end of the session. We do not have calpol or anything else like that in Preschool

[Guest]

We are the same as Cait.

[Beau]

No one should ever accept a child who arrives ill for a start.

 

If a child becomes ill during the day then you need to think and act quickly, particularly if you know the parents are not easily accessible. If you are in any doubt, or the child appears to be deteriorating fast then you need to get them to a hospital or at the very least the doctors. By all means contact the parents, but this is the type of scenario you have consent for medical emergency treatment for.

 

I would say that having something like Calpol, particularly if you care for children under 3 years, is a sensible precaution but I wouldn't use it other than in an emergency and on the instructions of a qualified medical practitioner. A doctor is only a phone call away and for some the time to actually travel to a doctors surgery is pretty minimal.

 

Most of the advice about febrile convulsions actually say that they are frightening but not generally serious.

[Lyanne]

Our application forms have a section to sign for parents giving us consent to give Piriton, plasters, first aid & act on their behalf if we have to get child to hospital; we draw these to thier attention and they cross any out they don't like. So I guess we do have blanket consent for Piriton, but not Calpol.

 

We have one form for long term medication eg inhalers, and don't review that each day with parents - I can see why it would be a good idea, but as it is for the sort of medication that isn't given every day, think we would be taking up a huge amount of our & the parents/carers time checking them. I'll estimate we've currently got 4 children with asthma and at least 10 with excema, for whom we have the medication they need occasionally.

 

The form for short term medication eg Calpol, antibiotics, we fill out when they start on it, and get parents to sign each day for the times.

[Guest]

When we had our first inspection for the private nursery provision the only thing we were asked to do was organise a first aid form........

 

we have consent from parents to administer waspeze, plasters and sun lotion (if they have their own named bottle) we also asked for consent to first aid, consent for emergency situations and on the back consent to things such as inhlaers which might be needed at certain times.

 

Consent each time something needs to be given seems OTT.

 

We do ask parents to sign when anyone has administered anything/ or when cold compress applied etc.........

[Guest]

We have no 'blanket' consent....always individual forms and signatures for individual cases...we don't keep Calpol to administer either, although we are sessional and only open for 3 hours at a time.

[Guest]

We don't keep calpol on the premises, we do the old fashioned tepid sponge bath until the parents arrive. We do have consent to take them to the local doctors or hospital, again we have consent for this.

[Buttercup]

I would not be happy giving any type of medicine or creams to a child that has not come from the parents and been signed for from the parents. We are not doctors. If a child is prone to febrile convulsions then they should provide the calpol not us.

 

Angela

[Upsy Daisy]

The blanket consent I use covers be to give them calopl which has been prescribed by a doctor specifically to be kept by me. I don't provide it.

 

I wouldn't actually give any medication without a form signed that day or, if I don't have that, a conversation with the parents in which I also ask them to collect the child.

 

I just can't imagine asking the parents to sign a new form every day just in case the child becomes ill while in my care.

 

I know febrile convulsions are not usually serious but I they they are best avoided if possible so if a GP will prescribe medication I am willing to administer it.

 

Has anyone had a discussion with their insurers about this?

[Guest]

we dont have a 'blanket consent', Ofsted said this was the correct procedure, when we had our Ofsted recently. A parent two weeks ago came in with a bottle of Calpol and asked to administer 5ml at 11.00am, as her daughter was experiencing tooth pain. I had to explain that we would not adminster Calpol, but would keep the child and telephone for Mum to collect her if the pain came back. The child is 3yrs old and stayed til 3pm with no signs of any dental pain.

 

Claire x

[Guest]

We had a little boy this week who came in to pre school fine but by 10.30 was crying and holding his ear saying that it hurt, it got worse over the next 30 mins - we tried Mum who we knew was in the middle of a chemotherepy session and both her other emergency contacts to no avail, we asked him if he had had some medicine that morning and he said that he hadn't, We didnt administer calpol a it is against our policy but it was really hard as I know this family well and class them as friends and if the said little boy had been playing at my house and I couldnt get hold of anyone I would of seen it as my responsibility to make him comfortable until his Mum arrived back!!