From the San Jose Mercury News:

A California judge’s ruling last year prohibited school staff other than nurses from administering insulin to students with diabetes. Parents and physicians say now that the ruling is endangering 15,000 vulnerable children, making them pawns in a political effort to force the nearly bankrupt state to hire more nurses.

Some parents are scrambling to get to schools to administer the injections themselves; others are pulling their kids out and educating them at home.

Fran Kaufman, an endocrinologist in Los Angeles, said ruling that only nurses can administer insulin in schools is a huge setback that compromises student safety. Under federal law, children with diabetes are guaranteed an equal education. Given the shortage of school nurses, she says it makes sense to expand the number of people who can administer insulin.

“We’re not asking anybody to do brain surgery,” Kaufman said. “We’re asking someone to be the technical deliverer of insulin. I’ve trained people who can’t read to give insulin. The nurses do not want another school employee helping out, even if it is a first-grade teacher who is diabetic themselves. This is about job security.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 10:02 am and is filed under budget, diabetes, education, special education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.