School nurses are busy. I mean crazy busy. The average school nurse is in charge of the daily health management of children with chronic health issues such as diabetes, asthma, cerebral palsy, seizures, heart conditions, food allergies and mental health conditions. Then throw in the feeding and toileting issues, giving medications, monitoring for disease outbreak, handing out ice packs, taking temperatures, and discerning who is sick and who is faking it; is it any wonder that dealing with a student’s head lice is just not always at the top of the list?
I’ve seen posts on social media about “lice outbreaks” and “infestations” in classrooms and schools. That is usually all a parent needs to see to get the alarms going. I can assure you that there are head lice in EVERY school, EVERY day. In fact, one in twenty children have lice at any given time. Once the alert has been raised, the comments on social media usually will include “Why aren’t we being told?” and “Why aren’t they checking every kid in the class?”.
With privacy laws, school nurses may not disclose cases of lice to anyone other than a child’s parent or guardian. Nor do school nurses have time to check an entire class for lice. Many will accommodate a parent’s request to check their child’s head, but they are looking for visible signs of lice, which includes live bugs and visible eggs. They do not have the time or the tools to perform a professional head check. If a student has just contracted lice in the past day or two, they may have only a couple of bugs and a few eggs that can definitely go unnoticed by a visible check from the school nurse. In fact, we have had many parents in our clinic that tell us, “The school nurse checked him and said he’s fine”, only to then be angry at the nurse when we pull a bug or egg from the child’s head. Don’t blame the nurse. Our head checks, which can last up to 30 minutes, entail combing through the entire head, section by section. Anything that looks suspicious goes right under the microscope. We can then show the parent and educate on proper identification. Imagine if the school nurse had to do that every time a parent wanted their child’s head checked?
School nurses can identify a lice infestation on a child within minutes, but if you want to catch it before it gets to that point, you need to schedule a professional head check or buy a professional comb and learn to do it yourself. Both of these options are available at Lice Clinics of America - Harrisburg located near Holy Spirit Hospital off of Erford Road. Next time you see an alarming “lice outbreak!” post on Facebook or receive the dreaded “lice call’ from your child’s school nurse, be proactive and get it checked out immediately. This will save you a lot of money, time and stress in the long run.
