South Lakes Students aren’t allowed to take over-the-counter medications during school hours per FCPS rules. Parents must sign a Medication Authorization Form and give medicine to the School Nurse for them to administer to students. The same steps are used when dealing with prescription medicines, except a physician must sign part of the form. Such precautions are in place for drugs like Advil, Tylenol, and Alieve.
These medications can be used for issues like headaches, menstrual cramps, and even braces, pain, all of which are problems that many high school students experience. These issues often don’t require prescription medication, but still impact kids during class. Over-the-counter medications, for the most part, can be bought by anyone. Many families have these types of medications in their homes.
While some students may misuse over-the-counter medicine either on purpose or by accident, I don’t believe that all students should be not trusted because of this. High school students know how to comprehend and read medicine labels. Much more so than, for instance, a first or second-grader. Along with this, most students have most likely taken an over-the-counter medicine at some point in their lives for various reasons.
“I feel like it must be so normal to get a headache at school, there are bright lights all the time, tons of noise, you’re using your brain constantly, there’s not a lot of quiet spaces…,” says Ms. Keisler, an English Teacher at South Lakes.
While most students are responsible with these medications, it seems like many don’t care about rules like the one above.
“I don’t think it affects people… there might be a special case that I don’t know about,” says Celeste Donovan, a ninth grader at South Lakes.
It seems to be an unimportant rule to most highschoolers. Their lives are not affected by it and if people don’t care about a rule, then it doesn’t matter.
One thing to look at is that over-the-counter medicines can cause harm to students if they are allergic to them. While these types of allergies are rare, they can still occur.
“So if their friends give them Advil it might seem fine and helpful but it could end up being really bad for the student,” says Ms. Keisler.
I think that along with the reason above, this concern is probably one of the main reasons why the rule was created in the first place; for the safety and sake of the students.
While rules like the ones regulating over-the-counter medicine may seem unnecessary, if students follow them, then they can be beneficial to the students’ safety.
