Insulin in Schools

By Quinn Phillips A few years ago, we covered a dispute between the California Department of Education and the California School Nurses Association regarding who should be able to administer insulin injections in schools to children with diabetes. At the time, a lawsuit filed by several San Francisco Bay–area parents of children with diabetes had led the Department of Education to relax its rule that only school nurses may deliver insulin to children who cannot deliver it themselves. These new rules, in turn, prompted the California School Nurses Association to sue the state. In the original 2008 trial, a state court judge ruled that under California law, only nurses may deliver medication, including insulin, in schools. Due to the low number of nurses in California schools — in 2007, when the first lawsuit was settled, only 30% of schools had a nurse in the building at any given time — this court ruling meant that many parents had to start coming to their child's school to administer insulin when a nurse was not available. Now, many of these parents may be breathing a sigh of relief. Earlier this month, the California Supreme Court ruled on an appeal brought by the state and other groups, including the American Diabetes Association, in favor of allowing other staff members to give insulin injections. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the court found it too burdensome to require, as California state law did, that only nurses give insuli...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs