Lack of Communication

“In September, 12-year-old Laporshia Massey, a student in Philadelphia, died after suffering an asthma attack.

A nurse was assigned to her school just twice a week. The day that she died was not one of those days.”

If only the teachers, nurse, and the parent had better communication about the students conditions and medications, Laporshia wouldn’t have relied completely on the nurse, who was away very often.

When we talked to parents and teachers who have experience with kids with asthma, we realized that there is a huge gap between the parents and the teachers.

Handbooks are getting large and larger each year, and schools want to protect themselves against litigation, which makes the teachers and nurses think twice in emergency situations, rather than trying to help out the kid as quick as possible. This causes the teachers to have asthma care and education is at the bottom of the teacher’s list.

It turns out that students aren’t allowed to carry medications in schools, and inhalers are kept with the nurse. They are NOT allowed to keep their inhalers with them.

What intrigued us more is the fact that a lot of the parents do now know about these legislations and where the inhalers have been kept. One of the parents told us that she didn’t know that her child’s inhaler has been kept in the principle’s office for a year. However, most of the parents don’t necessarily inform their teachers about the child’s asthma until the Parents Teacher Conferences.

“It would have been good if I received updates from the nurse instead of the child.”

— Pivate school teacher 1

“Parents wouldn’t update us if their child was in the hospital over the weekend, it’s something we need to know.”

“Sometimes parents wouldn’t tell us if their child had asthma, it was fairly informal. ” — Private school teacher 2

This was our initial spark that led us to create Connect, a platform that facilitates conversation among parents teachers and nurse and help them open up to each other.