Allan Appel Photo
School nurses at Tuesday night’s hearing.
School nurses returned to another public hearing on the budget to warn against layoffs, drawing alarming pictures of children potentially succumbing to food-allergy caused shocks and seizures and asthma-triggered cardiac arrest and other potentially tragic consequences.
Five nurses in all addressed a sparsely attended hearing at Wilbur Cross High School Tuesday night before the Board of Aldermen’s Finance Committee, which is reviewing the DeStefano administration’s proposed new $475 million city budget.
Amid a city budget crisis, four school nursing positions were recently eliminated, leaving 29 serving 53 schools. More layoffs loom.
Nurses speaking out Tuesday night predicted medically untrained teachers or principals being forced to intervene or to call 911 in nurse-less schools.
The testimony echoed the tear-filled talk Jennifer Caron (left foreground in above photo), a nurse laid off from Barnard Magnet School, offered at the aldermanic committee’s first public hearing on the budget at Hillhouse High two weeks ago.
“I’m floating from place to place,” said Laura Ematrudo (at center in photo), a 30-year veteran nurse with seven years in New Haven. While she acknowledged that official must make tough budgetary decisions, she urged them not to do it “on the backs of our children.”
“Right now I’m not practicing safely,” she said. Several of the nurses also called aldermen’s attention to the huge potential financial liability in the case of a serious accident, hospitalization, or death.
Finance Committee Chairman Yusuf Shah termed the testimony “huge.” He said he was alarmed by what he heard.
“I will call the attention of Dr. [Mario]Garcia [director of the city’s health department] to what we heard,” he said.
As the mother of a child with severe peanut, tree nut and shellfish allergies, I'm very concerned for the safety of my child and others like him. My other child occasionally needs to use his inhaler to treat his asthma. It's been a big concern of mine for some time that we don't have a full-time nurse at their school.
The nurses should be full-time, but at the very least all teachers and lunchroom staff should be trained in how to administer an epi-pen or an inhaler (the latter most kids know how to use themselves, but very young children usually need assistance). This training should be mandatory regardless of the presence of full-time or part-time nursing staff. While my food-allergic son knows how to self-administer his epi-pen, if he's truly in distress and experiencing anaphylactic shock, he may not be able to do it.
What's more, seconds count with his allergies. He needs his epi injection immediately upon experiencing a reaction. And, as any allergist would tell you, those symptoms appear more quickly with each subsequent reaction. Translation: Response time must be immediate. He does not have five or 10 minutes to wait for EMTs to show up. He needs his shot immediately, and the EMTs will take him to the hospital, where he will spend several hours receiving intravenous antihistamine and fluids. When he anaphylaxes, it's a real medical emergency. This is no bellyache or sore throat.
Training teachers and other staff to identify and treat anaphylaxis and asthma should not be expensive to do, but when you consider that most teachers already toe the line with so many responsibilities, it only serves to illustrate why our nurses are needed--perhaps now more than ever, given the increase in food allergies, asthma and other health issues among children. In my children's school of 500+ students, it seems unconscionable not to have a nurse there full-time. It's a bit like sending them off for a day at an unattended pool or beach.
I like to think the safety of the city's children is more important than that to DeStefano, et al. But I like to think a lot of things...