California Judge Rules Only Nurses Can Give Insulin To Kids

I very much sympathize with the affected parents, but it's important to note that this ruling effectively prevents E. from jabbing kids with needles, and that can only be a good thing:

A Sacramento Superior Court ruling Friday marks a major shift in the treatment of nearly 14,000 California schoolchildren with diabetes.

Judge Lloyd Connelly sided with the California School Nurses Organization, the American Nurses Association, the California Nurses Association and other nursing groups in their challenge to a 2007 rule that enabled trained school staff – not just school nurses – to administer insulin shots to diabetic kids.

"This is a big setback," said Jim Stone, who has a 12-year-old diabetic son and has fought, with other parents, to expand the number of people who can administer insulin to diabetic children in public schools.

There are 2,800 nurses in the 9,800 public schools across the state.

In a class-action lawsuit filed in 2005, parents had argued that with so few school nurses left in California, they were having to keep their diabetic children out of school or leave jobs to administer insulin shots themselves.

The California Department of Education settled with parents in 2007 and sent an advisory to districts throughout the state urging them to allow trained, unlicensed school staff to give the shots if a nurse or parent wasn't available.

Friday, Connelly ruled that the advisory is in conflict with state law that says only licensed nurses can administer injections.

Nancy Spradling, the executive director of the California School Nurses Organization said that "state law and the Business and Professions Code and the Nurse Practice Act all state clearly what falls under the category of nursing, which includes administering injections."

Improper administration can lead to low blood sugar, which can result in coma and death, she said.

...Spradling, with the School Nurses Organization, said "districts need to be told that school nurses are not a luxury, but a necessity, and with so many children with chronic conditions, they have to find a way to fund them."

According to the Disability Rights and Education Defense Fund, California has one of the highest ratios of students to school nurses in the country: 2,150 to 1.