http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2456311/Girl-12-dies-asthma-attack-nurse.html
Girl, 12, dies of an asthma attack because there was no school nurse due to Philadelphia budget cuts
- School budget cuts allowed for a school nurse only 2 days a week
- 12-year-old Laporshia would have lived if the school called rescue, according to a District source
- Teachers told her 'just be calm' and didn't take her to the hospital
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Laporshia Massey, 12, died of an asthma attack on Sept.25 after staff members at Bryant Elementary School in Cobbs Creek, PA didn’t provide immediate rescue.
The school only has a nurse on staff two days a week. This is due to Philadelphia budget cuts in schools implemented by Gov. Tom Corbett.
Daniel Burch, Laporshia’s father, is outraged. He says he received a call from the school saying that his daughter felt sick but assumed she was with a nurse. He told his daughter he would take care of her when she got home.
12-year-old Laporshia Massey, a student at Bryant Elementary School in Cobbs Creek died September 25 beacuse there was no school nurse to assist her
Burch’s fianceé, Sherri Mitchell also received a call from the school and says that volunteers at the school told Mitchell that the girl said she couldn’t breathe.
“Why didn’t [the school] take her to the hospital?’ asked Laporshia’s father. He believes that a qualified nurse would have recognized Laporshia’s illness as an emergency.
After the first budget and staffing cuts, one nurse warned the school that teachers were not qualified to help asthmatic students in her absence.
‘Without the school nurse, at a minimum, persistent errors in judgment will result in a child getting a substandard education,’ says school nurse Eileen Duffey. ‘In worst-case scenarios, life-threatening conditions may surface while a child is in school and go unnoticed.’
Bryant Elementary school in Cobbs Creek, PA where lack of medical assistance resulted in a young girl's death
According to Philadelphia School District Rules school staff members ‘must act promptly to provide immediate care.’ A source for the district believes, ‘if they had called rescue, she would still be here today.’
At the end of the school day a staff member drove Laporshia home at 3:15. Burch immediately recognized that his daughter needed immediate care after she ran up her stairs to grab her nebulizer machine.
Burch drove his daughter to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where she died later that afternoon.
According to The Washington Post, School's don't only lack nurses, they lack administrative staff to deal with a crisis. They are also dissuaded from calling 911 in most situations.
Pennsylvania Department of Health spokesperson Holli Senior told City Paper that she offered assistance in going over Laporshia’s death to help the school recognize critical errors. They recommend this ‘in certain situations to ensure that they did what they were supposed to do, in the order that they were supposed to do it.’
The school told Senior that they didn’t want any assistance or the health department to get involved.
Hundreds of parents have filed complaints regarding the shortage of qualified health professionals in schools due to budget cuts.
Laporshia's father, Daniel Burch, tells reporters he doesn't understand why the school didn't call the hospital
6th grader's death adds to fears over Philly layoffs of school nurses
Submitted by thenotebook on Fri, 10/11/2013 - 11:51 Posted in Latest news | Permalink
by Sarah-Whites Koditschek for NewsWorks
In late September, a Bryant Elementary School 6th grader died from asthma complications. Her parents and Philadelphia school administrators have offered conflicting accounts of the incident.
In the wake of the child's death, asthma educators are concerned about the impact that reduced staffing will have on medical emergencies that occur at school.
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