I’m filling out all the medical paperwork for S25 before his summer camp at WPI and noticed this:
" Please note that all prescription medications must be administered by the WPI Summer Programs healthcare staff; students may not possess or self administer prescription medication other than asthma inhaler or epi pen as indicated above. I authorize any medications listed above to be administered by WPI program staff, as directed, to the student participant. I understand that all medications, prescribed and over-the-counter must include original packaging, labels including the student participant’s name and date of birth, and specific instructions including dosage and times of day to be administered. If the medication is prescribed, a pharmacy label must be on the packaging."
I understand that this is probably their way to avoid liability and that ADHD meds are frequently abused.
I’m also thinking that S25 is going to balk at the idea of going to a nurse to get his meds before class in the morning.
We’re not going to get away with just sending him to camp for two weeks with meds and not mentioning it on the form, right? (He’s very responsible about his medication, FWIW. This is how we managed it for his summer program in France last year.)
Do you think they are actually super serious about administering every kid’s ADHD meds (I imagine my son isn’t the only kid in this program who would be queuing up outside the nurse’s office) one or twice a day, or is this boilerplate CYA stuff?
Who else has encountered this and what can you tell me?
Please don’t skirt the rules on this. Your kid has RX meds that he needs. He can not and should not keep them secretly in his possession. At the summer camps my kids went to, this would result in immediate removal from the camp.
It’s a safety issue not only for your kid but also for the others attending. These are controlled substances usually and sometimes get in the wrong hands.
Let the summer program nurse administer these meds. They will also be sure they are taken.
Well, he takes them in the morning before school and they never leave our kitchen unless we’re traveling. I’m guessing this is the case for most kids on ADHD meds/anti-depressants/etc.
Okay, this is what I figured. I hadn’t encountered this before (but our experience is limited given pandemic) and it caught me off-guard. But it sounds like this is normative and we will comply.
This is typical at all summer programs. She. My S24 checked in at his last summer they had kids even bring the nurse their Claritin. Only thing they can keep is epipens and rescue inhalers.
This was the case at my son’s camp. I bet he will get his meds, otherwise they will prompt him. (He will not be the only one). Alternatively, can he without? Lots of kids forego ADHD meds in summer.
I think if it were camp-camp (lanyards/archery/canoes/s’mores), sure.
For school-camp? Not a great idea. This is supposed to be a sort of college preview – two courses, living in a dorm, eating in dining hall, homework, etc.
Got it. I’d follow the rules on this one. You can ask some questions to suss out how obvious it will be. My guess is that they will take some efforts to be discreet.
I should sheepishly add that we are in general a by-the-book family – bike helmets, stopping for stop signs, turn signals, honor codes, etc. Our son is generally aligned, although sometimes he complains that we are the only people making him do x.
This just took me a minute to wrap my head around. We definitely had to send a doctor’s letter with him to Europe last summer so that he could bring his meds with him and take them (and there was no way we were going to try to work around that.)
It looks like there are summer programs out there with similar policies (students can self-administer with doctor’s orders in hand) but it depends on the state. Massachusetts definitely has tighter restrictions.
This is normal for summer camps and summer programs (not just academic). D20 had to turn in Claritin everywhere and in various states over the years before college.
When my kids went to summer programs, they even had to leave OTC meds that they might need with the program nurse, and a note that they were allowed to take them from us…think Tylenol and stuff like that.
In most cases, they just swing by on the way to breakfast. Since all over the counter meds have to be given to the nurse, kids will even be going for vitamins and allergy meds.
I tried to skirt this at boarding school with S23’s vitamins because I knew he wasn’t going to take them if he had to go to the nurse. (He’s not normally a vitamin taker, but his immune system was running low and he kept getting sick). He refused to keep them in his room because they looked too much like edibles (which is one of the reasons they had to hand them into the nurse).
Many ADHD drugs are amphetamines, so they have a high potential for theft or abuse. So it is not surprising that summer programs for minors would be concerned about them.
Both my older daughters’ boarding schools both allowed self-administration of OTC drugs such as ibuprofen, Claritin, and Tylenol. I think at least one of the overnight camps that my kids have attended might have also allowed this, but not the others. My memory on camps might be fuzzy. For my girls, the sticking point was strongly NOT wanting to go to a nurse when they had period cramps so I am glad that it worked out at most places. It seemed like more of a privacy thing than anything else in their minds and going to the infirmary for a period cramps med every 4-6 hours made it worse. Nevertheless, not a single school or camp (across 4 kids) has ever allowed a prescription med to be self-administrated by the kid. I believe that all required those types of medication to be dispensed by the nurse. Given the potential for abuse of ADHD medications that makes sense to me.
My son went to the U Chicago summer program for 3 weeks last summer at 15 years old and no one cared about where he kept his Vyvanse and Zoloft. I wish they had because it would have saved me worrying about him remembering every morning, which, thankfully, he mostly did. No one asked him for his meds, but this is a great point. There was little to no oversight at the U Chicago program (kids were partying in dorms with alcohol, hooking up, etc. just like they were college aged)
This summer he’s going to an art institute in Napa and they require notification of his medication and then they want us to supply a lockbox for it. I guess that’s something but I wish they would keep it and dole it out. Good practice for my son to remember, but it would take a load off my mind if they just did it for him.