Criminal Bandaids & Mothers

I cannot wait until this week is over! Just one more day of work and then I can pretend it doesn’t exist for the weekend, plus Monday which is the public holiday for Australia Day. So three days of blissful freedom!

Things were going okay work-wise until Wednesday when I got a call from the coordinator asking me if I’d put a Bandaid on one of the kids. I said yes, because I had chucked one on a girl after I’d noticed a scratch where a little bit of skin had come off too – nothing bad at all, no blood, but just thought it was best to cover it, and I then proceeded to not think about it even once again until I got this phone call. Well, apparently I’ve committed the world’s worst crime according to this girl’s mother because I hadn’t ‘cleaned the wound’ before putting a Bandaid on and that her daughter had ‘fallen over’ and ‘come home covered in uncleaned scrapes.’ I’m not an angry person but my blood boiled instantly upon hearing that this mother had actually put a complaint in about it. No. 1 – When I asked the daughter how the scratch had happened, she had said she’d just knocked it in the bathroom so I don’t know what big dramatic fall this mum is talking about. No. 2 – There was literally O N E small scratch. No. 3 – I repeat, a S C R A T C H! What exactly was I supposed to be cleaning?! There was no huge, open wound spurting blood, only a tiny bit of skin that was slightly raised but so small that even a miniature infection couldn’t wiggle it’s way in there. I just don’t understand and I am so mad about the whole thing.

I had a big chat with my coordinator and it turns out there’s some suss things going on with the mother and not everything is adding up; lots of little lies and inconsistencies. For example, blaming us for not following her required medical procedures when really she hadn’t added any requirement notes to her child’s medical form at all, but telling us that she had and then going in later on to actually add it as though we wouldn’t know that it hadn’t been there from the beginning when we print out the medical notes every day for the kids attending the program. So thankfully at least my coordinator is on my side and after 24 hours of me feeling anxious and going over the situation again and again in my head – should I have looked more closely at the scratch and noticed that it needed to been cleaned? Was it actually something I should’ve written up an incident report for, as the mother is demanding? But no, I have decided there is no point in stressing out or being mad about the situation because at the end of the day, while I am first aid trained, I’m very much not a doctor or medical professional and I made a decision based on the knowledge I have and if that was the wrong decision, well I’m sorry but last time I checked, a kid hasn’t died from a scratch. And if we wrote up an incident report for every time a child gets so much as slightly knocked, the world would be drowning in paperwork. What’s happened has happened and I just need to hope that the mum backs off, which surely she will when she realises that she’s been caught out in her lies.

Whew, okay, glad that’s out!

I was going to write about some other things but it’s 1opm now and I’m trying to get to sleep at a decent hour so might just try and write again tomorrow instead. I know nothing I write is of any great importance or interest to anyone else, but I’m actually finding it really helpful to just rant a little bit and get these things off my chest, even if nobody else reads it!

Ashleigh