The incident as described in the translation bears remarkable similarity to something that happened to my son two years ago.
In his case, both bones of his left forearm were broken in two places. There was no question that the school was in any way at fault for that but their reaction was the same.
My four year old boy was forced to sit and wait for his mother for more than an hour and a half. He screamed until he lost his voice. (The kindergarden did not have my phone number!) She took him to a hospital that was only a few hundred metres away and the doctor there seemed to think that resetting the bones before the painkillers had taken effect was a good idea. And, he didn’t bother to set the bones very well because in his opinion there was no need, “Children’s bones fix themselves.” was the man’s considered medical opinion. The whole thing was just bizarre.
The kindergarden simply had no procedure for dealing with that type of injury. The only thing they wanted to do was offload responsibility to the parents as quickly as possible.
Are you in fact letting yourself in for all sorts of trouble by taking the kid to a hospital? Or is it just that people here don’t want to ever make decisions?
They will make decisions as long as they are not responsible for the consequences.
In their understanding there is no responsbility for inaction
Again there would be no problems, if everybody agreed and understood before hand on the standard procedure to deal with this.
If no procedure exists, the person is worried that they would get in trouble for taking the kid to the hospital. Sombody could ask, why did you not wait, why did you not phone for the ambulance, why did you not wait for the parents, else if a scapegoat was needed the person could be blamed. Its easier for them to say " Nobody told me what to do!!!"
So when you get a Hess franchise do you get an operations manual that says “to protect the good name of Hess, thou shalt take injured children to hospital immediately”, or not?
If not, and the ‘system’ has been bought from Hess, then Hess are at fault? Seems a bit tenuous to me. On the other hand, if Hess have laid down a guideline and it hasn’t been followed…
I remember lying in the road, trapped under my nearly new motorbike, with petrol pissing all over me, a year ago thinking “It’s true, they really don’t do anything to help people when shit happens.” Frightening way for a ‘society’ to ‘function’.
When a child fell and split her chin (she was running near the sinks) at school last year, she was taken to the hospital immediately by a staff member after applying some first aid, regardless of who might have been at fault. I think that’s the difference between some schools like Hess and real schools like mine. In our school, the children’s happiness and safety comes first over anything, including liability. If I were a parent, I would be more likely to sue if the school left my child in agonizing pain for an hour and a half than if they neglected to mop up a puddle of water that caused the child to hurt themselves in the first place.
Accidents happen, but traumatizing a child is simply inexcusable for a school.
We’ve had two accidents requiring stitches at my school (“my” in the partnership sense), both involving kids running/playing on stairs and in both cases immediately took the children to the most reputable hospital in town, MacKay (please note- I said “reputable”, I didn’t say good), while trying to contact their parents- not always easy.
Luckily, both were long-time students whose parents apologised to us for their kid’s behaviour, and offered to pay the deductible (we turned them down, of course)
(From my experience with Hess, the “screw you- we’ve got connections at the MoE” is what makes the story sound so believable.)
[quote=“stragbasher”]I remember lying in the road, trapped under my nearly new motorbike, with petrol pissing all over me, a year ago thinking “It’s true, they really don’t do anything to help people when shit happens.” Frightening way for a ‘society’ to ‘function’.[/quote]I’m sorry for your experience. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been helped out by Taiwanese strangers in similar situations, so that generalisation doesn’t always apply.