The short straw

If you've been reading for awhile, or know me in person, you know this: I do not have good luck. Don't ask me what I've done to deserve such karma, but I once again drew the short straw: one of my three schools out of 29 in the district was chosen to have its vaccination records audited by the Public Health Department. I was notified of this on the last day of February, and didn't know what to expect. As it turns out, to no one's surprise, the entire process is a bunch of B.S.

To begin with, I am probably not the right person to be audited, because my attitude tends to be along the lines of: I have something better to do than what I deem to be useless paperwork. Instead, I stuck my health clerk on the task, and mostly watched from the sidelines. It involved the health clerk calling the public health nurse (PHN), who she stays on good terms with for good reason, and asking exactly who they would be auditing: 7th grade, and they would only be looking at the Tdap records. We (the health clerk, really) focused entirely on getting the 7th grade ready, and then called the PHN back to tell her we were good to go. The audit was scheduled for today amidst much hype: omg, an audit! I still lacked the energy to put forth any sort of caring, not when I have diabetics with blood sugar flying all over the place. The PHN arrived today, and we set to work. We (again, the health clerk) had already pulled every 7th grader's vaccination record and had them in alphabetical order. The PHN went through each one, approximately 300, and made sure all our i's were dotted, and our t's were crossed. And if they weren't? We corrected them right in front of her. It was simply checking to see that the student's Tdap vaccination date was printed in the correct location on the proper form: there wasn't even cross-checking against the real vaccine record to check that the date was right. She also interviewed us about our record collecting process, and we gave all the right answers...except the one that I was left to answer while my health clerk disappeared momentarily.

PHN: Do you offer the personal belief waiver as a temporary exemption from the requirement while the parents wait for an appointment, or while they can't find their child's immunization record?

Me: Well...yeah, sometimes.

I knew this was not the answer she wanted to hear, and she knew I knew it was wrong. We talked about the population of this school, and that when my choices are to exclude a student from school on account of either their parent's irresponsiblity, or an actual lack of ability to get the shot, or let them attend school and sign a waiver in the meantime, I allow the waiver because I just don't have the heart to kick deserving kids out of school. She was clearly on my side, despite the fact that that's not exactly what the rules specify, and even with my honesty about my waiver policy, we appeared to pass with flying colors. The PHN made a comment about the audit that pretty well summed up my feelings: "This is so stupid."

And that, my friends, is where your tax dollars are going. I apologize to anyone who is about to write a check out to Uncle Sam in the next few weeks, because what I wrote above probably made it just that much more irritating.