Diabetic Students Can Now Receive Insulin Shots from School Staff in California

A Legal Victory for California Diabetic Students and Their Families

On August 12, 2013, the California Supreme Court unanimously decided that unlicensed school staff should be able to administer insulin shots to diabetic students when a nurse is not around. Prior to this ruling, parents of diabetic children often faced serious hardships in ensuring that their children received timely insulin shots at school.

Why Did This Ruling Take So Long To Achieve?

Consider: a number of existing California laws, such as the Education Code, already permit parents and even children themselves to administer insulin shots when necessary. If a child can self-medicate with insulin when necessary, would a trained teacher be any less capable of doing the same for that child?

In the parents’ view, which had been taken up by the state Supreme Court, the practical approach would emphasize equal access to care – administration of insulin (and other prescribed medications) – without jeopardizing diabetic students’ safety at schools.

However, the American Nurse Association (ANA) opposed the idea that non-nurses should be able to administer insulin to students. As a professional nursing organization, ANA worries about the safety of this long-awaited solution that does not come from the expert community of nurse professionals. Many discount ANA’s concerns about safety as related to union interests or professional corporatism, but even if that is so, ANA’s concerns are not without merit.

Health Care Should Not Be Compromised
Obviously, health care professionals perform a range of technical services. However, many of their duties (such as insulin shots) could be safely replicated by unlicensed laypersons. The question can be raised: Would fix-it-yourself outsourcing of health care services increase the quality of health care?

The most important point is this: Health care should not be compromised simply because a particular health care service is traditionally performed by a licensed professional. In education, we want qualified educators to teach our children how to read and write. But no one would argue that only a licensed teacher can help our children learn how to correct a spelling error. The same should be true for health care. We shouldn’t have to rely exclusively on qualified professionals to accomplish acts that could easily and safely be performed by laypersons.