Father and GP campaigns for nursery to relax its rules on conjunctivitis
A GP and father of twins has recently campaigned for a nursery to change their sickness policy with regards to conjunctivitis. Dr Finnikin pushed for the change in policy after his own toddler was sent home with the infection by the University of Birmingham’s nursery. The doctor is also a researcher for the university and set about gathering research on the matter. Dr Finnikin found that 87% of the 164 nurseries he asked, would exclude children with conjunctivitis according to their policies.
Dr Finnikin said the setting also required his daughter to be treated with antibiotics before she was allowed to return. His research was in agreement with almost half of the 164 settings requiring the infected child to have received antibiotic treatment before being allowed to return to the nursery. This contradicts the Public Health England guidance that settings follow with regards to infection control. The guidance from PHE states that for children with conjunctivitis, being sent home is not necessary and recommends antibiotics only in severe cases.
Dr Finnikin did say he could understand the policy is used to restrict an outbreak and control infection; however the possible risks do not outweigh the harms and costs of the policies. It can be considered unreasonable to expect a parent to miss wages from working to keep a child off nursery that is not unwell. Also the Doctor did suggest that giving children antibiotics unnecessarily can cause them to gain a resistance to the medicine and can put children in more pain or harm than conjunctivitis alone due to the side effects of some prescribed drugs.
Defo we do a hard enough jib without putting other children and staff at risk children do touch their eyes they transfer it onto other things within nursery which then gets spread to other children and staff as long as children have got there drops and condition is being treated then they are allowed in to nurseries. Some parents just dont want to take the time to make sure their child is fit and well to be in and they forget about passing infections etc to the ither children and staff which ends with them unwell too and staff dont want to be off if it can be helped and they also dont want to pass it on to their families. So a day off nursery fir one child or staff and lots of other children infected and off weigh it up parents andbe responsible
I think that they should be kept off. It’s not fair to risk other children’s health and also the staff. The staff in most nurseries don’t get paid sick but would also have to stay off with it.
We are not medical practitioners and in some circumstances conjunctivitis can be accompanied by flu like symptons. As long as the child has started treatment and is no longer infectious then we will allow them to return but they need to be seen by a GP to ensure sight would not be affected and the child is otherwise well.
There is a common sense factor alongside these policies and they are there to protect the team and other children as if all staff team got conjunctivitis no one would be able to care for the children and he would be turned away. Also when a child is sick they want to be with their parents not nursery.
Conjunctivitis is highly contagious. Yes excessive use of antibiotics is not good but sending a child to school, preschool or nursery with a highly contagious condition to infect others and being promoted by a Dr because of childcare issues is awful. Epidemics close settings causing issues for huge amounts of people, so if your child is ill with a contagious condition, keep them off, forget your childcare issues
We don’t exclude children with conjunctivitis unless it is a severe case and they are unwell.
However we have had parents complain that we haven’t excluded children and then their child have caught it!
You can’t win either way
If a child has bad conjunctivitis it generally means they are not well and should therefore not be at nursery.Other parents do not want their children to get it.As others state we are not nurses and if drops were to be given it is a parents responsibility to administer them.
I work in a nursery and as long as on drops can come in but at the end of the day we are not nurses and if children are contagious putting others at risk and sometimes as a nursery practitioner you are put in difficult situations as it is