As summer approaches, many families are enrolling their children in summer camp programs. Our team at Northeast Pediatrics is committed to providing your children and teens with the highest level of care and service available. Many camps and summer programs require health forms. In order to serve you best, we ask that you follow these guidelines when requesting Camp Health Forms to be signed by our pediatricians.

• If your child has not had a Well Visit within the last year, we cannot vouch for their state of health. We will need to set up an appointment for a well visit before completing forms
• Read the entire form. Fill in every blank for which you have information. That should include the history questions. If the form states that the history is to be filled out by the physician, plan on answering the questions and your child's physician will review it.
• If your child has complicated medical problems, complete the form and if we have questions when the physician reviews it, we will most likely be able to handle those questions with a phone call.
• For the safety of your child, we do not sign for "just in case" medications to be dispensed at camp. If your child takes medication on a daily basis that we have prescribed, we will be happy to provide any appropriate medication forms required.
• Please plan ahead when submitting camp forms as we need 7-10 days to sign and return then to you. Signed forms can be picked up at our office in the reception area. There is a $15.00 fee per child for camp forms. Tip: If you bring 3 Camp Forms for one child on one day, the fee is still just $15.00!

Please read the following statement from our physicians about signing camp medications.

We have had several requests from parents of patients to sign forms authorizing Camps and Daycare Centers to administer various over the counter medications to their children in the event of fever or illness.

As physicians, to give written permission to administer a medication is an agreement to accept the responsibility for the outcome of that action. If we have no information about the condition of the child at the time that the medication is administered, we cannot advise that medication be given or take the responsibility for the consequences of giving the medication. The treatment of fever with antipyretics (such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen) for most children is not an emergency. For children with special conditions for which administration of antipyretics are important, specific orders and guidelines for antipyretic administration do need to be provided by a physician and we will continue to do so.

To illustrate why we are concerned; the administration of antipyretic medication to a child with bacteremia or bacterial meningitis could result in some transient improvement in symptoms, which might lead caregivers to delay seeking appropriate treatment. Delay of appropriate treatment in these diseases could have serious detrimental long-term health sequelae.

We will continue to provide written orders for those medications, which we have prescribed for individual children for specific medical problems. However, if there are medications that you do not routinely administer to your children, please do not request that we authorize the use of those medications as we will not sign non-specific orders for over the counter medication.