- HEENT (head, eyes, ears, nose, throat)
- Lungs
- Heart
- Neurological
- Abdomen
- Extremities
- Skin
- Genital
- Urinary
There are also hearing, vision, and dental screens required, and the child's BMI and TB risk assessment must be recorded.
Worst of all, there is a developmental screen where the child is assessed for:
- Emotional/social
- Problem solving
- Language/Communication
- Fine motor skills
- Gross motor skills
All of the results must be recorded by the physician on a form and given to the school. In other words, to the government. I was shocked! Do you think that access to those records is kept strictly limited? Check out paragraph C:
C. Such physical examination report shall be placed in the child's health record at the school and shall be made available for review by any employee or official of the State Department of Health or any local health department at the request of such employee or official.
I'm not even sure what a "local health department" is. Who are all these people who would have access to my daughter's personal information? How could I possibly hold them accountable? The records might as well be kept in Wikipedia.
A quick Google search tells me that this is not uncommon. It looks like at least Nebraska, Kentucky, Connecticut, Florida, and maybe many other states have similar laws. What I can't tell with the quick search is whether they require that the results be reported to the school, or if one just needs to submit proof that the child has had a medical exam. Either way, the laws are another example of the nanny-state gone mad. But the idea that, in Virginia at least, the government has this type of sensitive data for every person attending public school and that I've never heard a soul complain about it is mind-blowing.
Another good reason to homeschool.
Hi Amy,
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that this is pretty ridiculous. I think it stems from the fact that many people don't take their children to a doctor really ever. And there are a lot of childhood illnesses that can be detected, prevented, treated if caught early (ventricular septal defects, asthma, testicular cancer). Which I know isn't the governments job, but that's what they're trying to do...Also, more importantly and somewhat more legitimately for schools - they don't want to expose healthy children to things like TB or measles.
I think that it would be reasonable for a private school to require some form of physical or assessment for some of these things in advance to protect the health of their student population. Also, this would allow the school to help the student as well - to make sure they use their inhaler if they have asthma, for example. Although I would expect them to keep the information MUCH more private.
The other thing I wanted to mention, just from an information standpoint, is that I've done some of these physicals (I've been working in a pediatricians office). In Georgia, basically we just check a box labeled "normal" for all of these things. And for abnormal things we write a quick, non-specific comment like "heart murmur" or "asthma". So really very little information actually goes into the physical exam report that the school gets. Then the doctor signs off that the child has had an exam, is healthy and that's it.