Prior to your student with diabetes attending school:
Please contact your school nurse to arrange a meeting to discuss your child's health care plan.
The school nurse will work with you to ensure the safety and needs of your student are in place while at school. You will need to have current Health Care Provider orders for your student (the school nurse can provide the forms if needed). At this meeting, the school nurse, parent and student will collaborate and develop a health care plan for the school day, based on the health care provider orders, students' individual needs and school schedule. Once the health care plan has been developed for the school, a meeting with the school staff to disseminate this information is appropriate.
Meeting participants:
Parents, student, teacher(s), school nurse, school health aide and anyone else you feel should be included, such as principal or assistant principal, special teachers, etc.
Purpose of Meeting:
Educate school staff regarding diabetes, individual students' needs and management of diabetes in the school setting. Training / handouts should include: general diabetes information, current health care plan, blood glucose testing schedules, what high and low blood sugars look like for your student, snacks, glucagon and insulin administration.
To provide to school:
Diabetes kits for health room and classroom including:
Backup pump site insertion kits, blood glucose meter, lancing device and extra lancets, test strips, extra batteries, juice(s), glucose tablets, cake gel, snack(s), ketone test strips, insulin pen, needles, glucagon kit.
Tips for School
- Work with your school nurse to schedule snacks and testing during natural breaks in your student's schedule.
- Remind classroom teacher that you need to be notified of classroom parties. Carb counts would be ideal but are not always possible. You may want to have special treats available for these occasions.
- Some teachers like to give candy rewards for good behavior. Plan how you will handle this.
- Provide accurate and current emergency contact information to the school, and update the school with any changes.
- Communicate with your school nurse to incorporate your student's lunch and specials schedule so you can plan testing, snacks and insulin administration accordingly. Remember that PE days will mean different procedures.
- Field trips, field day and other similar events will need special planning.
- You may want to discuss disaster planning with your school nurse.