Your Child’s Asthma Management Plan at School
- Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 13:49
- Asthma
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- Erin:
- So, [the asthma management plan] includes triggers, medications, and allergies, I would imagine. Now, then you send your child off to school, and there they are spending their majority of their time now away from you. How can you deal with their asthma management plan? What happens when you take it to school?
- Nancy:
- This is a very traumatizing time for parents. Every fall we get calls in from parents who are just out of their minds because their child’s asthma was so well controlled, and then they send their kid to school, and there’s a class pet such as, in one school there’s this cat that’s allowed to roam through the entire school. In other cases it’s a hamster that’s in the classroom or what have you, or in the cafeteria some children are exquisitely allergic to milk or peanuts, and they will anaphylax – that means their airways will shut down very rapidly – and could die. We have produced a school pack for parents and for school educators to use, and that has been very helpful. That’s also available through the organization at our website. But we also conducted a survey. We’ve heard for 15 years from families every single year about the nightmares that they were having, so we conducted a survey of the schools to find out what are the burning issues, and we found that 61 percent of the schools do recognize that there is an increase in their students with asthma over the past three years.
- Erin:
- So, [asthma] seems to be on the rise?
- Nancy:
- Yes, it definitely seems to be on the rise, and they’re taking notice of it. Well, 41 percent of the schools surveyed do not allow children to carry their asthma medications on their person while they’re at school, and these are schools that do not always have a school nurse on staff, so that the child when they go down to the clinic to get their inhaler.
- Erin:
- This has to do with the zero tolerance policy, no drugs on kids absolutely.
- Nancy:
- Exactly. And yet in their air at schools as reported by these administrators says, it’s like 56 percent of the schools allow class pets, 76 percent use chemical sprays and pesticides.
- Erin:
- I would imagine dust and mold is a problem because our schools are aging and the infrastructure has been falling apart for years now.
- Nancy:
- Well, absolutely, and 36 percent of them say their schools are carpeted, which the carpeting just holds molds and dust and all types of pet dander. So these are all issues that parents are faced with. The good news was that the majority of them did understand that asthma can lead to death. 71 percent of the respondents said they want educational materials for their clinics and for their libraries. They want training for their personnel, and they want to do a good job for our students.
So, what we need to do, [as] parents, teachers, physicians and policy makers, we need to come together to structure healthy learning environments.
And what is healthy as a learning environment for students with asthma is healthy for absolutely everyone.
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