Day Care Health Protocols

Day care centers quick to send children with minor illnesses home.
USA Today (4/20, Szabo) reports, "No one wants sick kids to suffer or infect their classmates, but many parents can't take off work, especially when a toddler comes down with the fourth ear infection of the year, says pediatrician Andrew Hashikawa, MD, of the Medical College of Wisconsin." Therefore, the "American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association updated guidelines about when to send kids home in 2002" to help parents and daycare centers alike. The results of a new survey indicate, however, that "more than half of day care center directors would" still "send children home unnecessarily for minor illnesses."
Such findings mirror previous survey results conducted in states that don't stand behind those guidelines, which were first introduced in 1992, according to Reuters (4/19, Joelving). The state of Wisconsin, however, appeared to endorse the recommendation some ten years ago.
With that in mind, researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin "conducted phone surveys with 305 child care directors and posed five scenarios in which a child was sick with an illness, such as a cold, conjunctivitis, or gastric flu," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (4/19, Johnson) reported. "According to guidelines...children with such illnesses should not be excluded from day care." But, "57% of directors said they would exclude children who fit at least one of the five scenarios."