INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS: TOP STORY SPREADING THE WORD
WHILE SOME DISTRICTS DO WHAT THEY CAN TO ADMINISTER EPINEPHRINE, A NEW FEDERAL LAW AIMS TO ENCOURAGE STOCKPILING THE MEDICATION AND TRAINING NON-MEDICAL STAFF
WRITTEN BY BARBARA FASING
I
magine a big yellow school bus transporting a class of primary grade school children to a field trip on a very warm spring day. Te windows are lowered, allowing a bee easy
entrance into the bus. A child having known allergic reactions to bee stings is stung. Te child desperate- ly needs his doctor’s prescribed dose of epinephrine to prevent going into cardiac arrest or anaphylactic shock, a condition where the throat and tongue swell considerably. What happens next? Te crisis described above is being handled in various ways throughout the country in response to a new federal law signed by President Obama on Oct. 31. Te School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act requires states to take steps in order to qualify for special health care grants, encourages states to allow schools to stock the life-saving epinephrine and ensures the training of non-medical school staff to administer the medication.
It also amends the Public Health Service Act
with respect to asthma-related grants for child health services and gives an additional funding preference to a state that allows self-administration of asthma and anaphylaxis medication. Te new
14 School Transportation News February 2014
act makes a certification concerning the adequacy of the state’s civil liability protection law to protect trained school personnel who may administer epinephrine to a student believed to be having an anaphylactic reaction. Elementary and secondary schools in such a state
are now required to the following: permit trained personnel to administer epinephrine to a student reasonably believed to be having such a reaction; maintain a supply of epinephrine in a secure loca- tion that is easily accessible to trained personnel for such treatment; and implement a plan for having one or more designated personnel trained in admin- istering epinephrine on the school premises during operating hours. With 30 states having guidelines in place for
schools to stock undesignated epinephrine, already four states — Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada and Virginia — require the stocking of the medication.
TRAINING NON-MEDICAL STAFF In Trumbull County, Ohio, teams of medical
professionals are training bus drivers, bus attendants and non-medical school staff in the proper method of administering the drug. Epinephrine is packaged
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