Othello School District, Lions Club team up for Health Services Day
Bob Kirkpatrick/The Sun Tribune - Janet Axtman, Scootney Elementary assistant nurse, administers a hearing test to a student at Lutacaga Friday.
Bob Kirkpatrick/The Sun Tribune - Pictured from left are Lion's Club member Donna Ruttan, Othello School District Director of Health Services RN Abby Hilmes, and Hiawatha's nurse assistant Tiffany Lebacken who are illustrating the eye tests that were conducted with the Plusoptix vision screening device.
Annual hearing and vision tests for thousands of local school kids were conducted at Lutacaga Elementary School Friday.
Director of Health Services for the Othello School District RN Abby Hilmes, headed up the daunting task.
“Each year the district conducts hearing and vision tests for grades K-7; fourth and sixth grades excluded,” Hilmes said. “These tests are performed within the first six weeks of the school year.”
The hearing test is comprised of a series of beeps in which kids are equipped with a set of head phones hooked up to a machine that produces audible tones. They are asked to raise their hands when they hear them, no matter how slight they might be.
The vision examinations were administered by a handheld auto refractor vision screening device called the Plusoptix, which is used to detect prevalent vision disorders in kids.
Undetected and untreated disorders can cause Amblyopia, also known as lazy eye according to the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus. Amblyopia typically begins to develop by the age of 5 and can trigger decreased vision in one or both eyes due to abnormal development of vision at infancy or during childhood. Vision loss can occur when nerve pathways between the brain and the eye aren’t properly stimulated. As a result, the brain favors one eye, usually due to poor vision in the other eye. It is the leading cause of vision loss among children.
Other disorders the Plusoptix can detect include hyperopia (farsightedness), myopia (nearsightedness), anisometropia (unequal refractive power), anisocoria (unequal pupil size) and strabismus (eye misalignment).
Hilmes said the hearing and vision tests were administered to all the elementary schools in the district, which translates to roughly 3,000 kids.
Donna Ruttan with the Othello Lions Club was instrumental in helping bring the Plusoptix scanner to the school district.
“We (Lions Club) purchased one last spring and let the school district use it for preschool screenings,” she said. “Vision has always been a real focus for us ever since Helen Keller came to the Lions Club in 1920 seeking support needs for the blind.”
The Plusoptix scanner impressed Hilmes so much she put in a request to the district superintendent and was given two of the apparatuses.
“They are more accurate, take less time, are less obtrusive than the old method of vision tests we used to administer, and they really help with diagnosis of lazy eye,” she said. “This is a big undertaking that poses a lot of challenges with all the grade school kids in the district being tested. We are blessed for having such great support from the Lions Club — from Donna — and all the community members who volunteer their time help out as well. This wouldn’t be possible without them.”