Medication

Authorizations, logging each dose, and keeping a record that stands up to a licensing review.

For directors, assistant directors and teachers

Authorization comes first

No dose without a parent authorization on file. RoundUp captures the medication, dosage and schedule, with a parent signature taken in person.

In person matters. A verbal agreement at the door, however sincere, is not an authorization, and it is precisely the thing that turns a routine dose into an incident.

Adding a medication

Record the medication name, the dosage, when it should be given, and the end date. An end date keeps stale authorizations from lingering — a course of antibiotics that finished in March should not still be active in June.

Logging a dose

Use Log Dose at the time you give it, recording the dosage given and the time. Log it as you do it, not at the end of the day: this is the record that answers "did she get her 2pm?" and a reconstruction is not an answer.

The administration log shows every dose given, by whom and when.

Rules worth holding

• Medication arrives in its original labelled container, with the child's name on it.
• The label, the authorization and the log should agree. If they don't, stop and sort it out before giving anything.
• One person gives, and that same person logs. Splitting those two steps is how double doses happen.

Allergies and emergency medication

Allergies belong on the child's record where teachers see them without having to look. Emergency medication — an EpiPen or inhaler — should be noted with where it's kept, because in the moment it's needed, nobody has time to search.

See Enroll a child for allergy notes and Document expirations for allergy action plans.

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