Tool kit helps teach schools about diabetes
November 6, 2008
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Paul Dalby
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
The school playground is a sea of children walking, talking and running. All except one little girl, who approaches the teacher on monitor duty complaining that she doesn't feel well.
The teacher tells the 6-year-old the fresh air will "do her good, so go and play." The teacher doesn't realize the little girl is a Type 1 diabetic and suffering the effects of low blood sugar.
"Young children 6 and under may not even recognize their blood sugar is low," says Elaine Wilson, a diabetes nurse educator. "They get tired and pale and sit in a corner."
And that, she says, should be a teacher's cue to be "quite afraid." She says the playground scenario is very real. So, too, is the other extreme: the tendency for staff to "hit the panic button" and call in the parent when a simple snack would have remedied the situation.
The information gap in schools is about to be closed by a new school kit that promises to make managing diabetes in the classroom as easy as A-B-C.
The kit was created by Wilson and a team of experts at the Trillium Health Centre's pediatric diabetes centre in Mississauga to address the needs of about 26,000 school kids in Ontario with Type 1 diabetes.
It consists of a short DVD, a user-friendly brochure and health record forms for each diabetic child, detailing his or her precise needs.
It is already being used by the Halton public and Catholic school boards, and the Trillium Health Centre plans to make it available to every school board in the province.
Toronto Star