Introduction
Registered nurses play a vital role in supporting and managing case of abuse and neglect. For the wellbeing and safety of children they intervene with holistic care and facilitate evidence based practices to support the vulnerable children (Tucker et al, 2025). Purpose of the essay is to critically understand the role of registered nurse in providing support to child who is at the verge of risk. The scenario set for the essay entails primary school child named Mia, a five year old girl, who lost interest in the classroom activities. The reason identified that Mia is suffering from pain due to her cracked baby molar.
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Mandatory Reporting
In Australia, mandatory reporting is the legislative requirement that focuses on reporting about the child abuse or neglect case to the government authorities. Under this, only specified individuals are allowed to report suspected case to the government bodies. In Victoria state nurses, midwives, registered teachers, police officers are allowed to report about the child abuse case (Harris et al, 2025). In the context of current scenario, community nurse is allowed to report the case of child to the local authorities. As nurse residing in Victoria, thus it is crucial to report child case to the local government body for providing support to the child who have cracked molar and have not been reviewed by the dentist. Nurse can proceed with reporting about child protection intake service in LGA (local government area) to support child and understand whether cracked molar is the result of abuse or not.
Likewise, under Youth and Families Act 2005 nurses are allowed to report the case with the reasonable ground belief that child is in need of safeguarding from physical abuse (Austlii, 2025). Therefore, nurse can begin with referring Mia’s case to the Orange door which provides immediate well-being and support to the child and reduces the risk of further harm. However, systemic barriers and lack of support hinders the nurse’s ability to report case to the authorities.
Preventive and Supportive Measures
The preventive and supportive measures nurse can take are as follows-
Educating parent and child: It is crucial to educate parent of Mia to understand the importance of oral hygiene and enables them to visit dental office once in a month to address any issue before it turns into emergency situation. Educating parents to ensure that their child is doing proper brushing and have balanced diet to maintain the strong teeth.
Working with dentist: Enabling Mia to visit dentist and receive proper treatment for her cracked molar. Collaborating with dentist also helps in providing proper dental care to the child and devising plan that comprise of information about flossing technique and brushing to maintain oral health (Mantinieks et al, 2024).
Collaborate with school teacher: Collaboration with school teacher helps in drafting social development strategies for Mia to improvise her communication and interaction with peers in class.
The Scenario
The red flag which suggests that Mia is at risk of harm are listed below-
- Her cracked molar
- Difficulty in assembling items that she brings to schools everyday
- Avoiding lunch before play time
- Playing alone indicating the lack of social interaction
- Low confidence in playing with equipment and no participation in the sport activities.
All these have been indicating that she is at risk and have lost interest in everything due to the acute pain by cracked molar. It is also been reported that Mia is distancing herself from her peers and teachers which indicates her poor emotional intelligence. Overall careful plan need to be prepared that support both oral health and social development of the child.
In the context of medically consequence a cracked molar in child can result into tooth sensitivity and abscess infection that affect the wellbeing of child. If this left untreated then it opens door for the bacteria to seep into tooth pulp and cause infection. This tooth abscess affects jawbone, fat cells as well as facial muscles (Johnson et al, 2025). Thus, it causes severe pain to child that result into high fever, tender neck glands and face swelling. Deeper crack in molar can affect overall structural integrity of tooth which results into tooth loss. Therefore, for the safety of Mia it is crucial to make her visit paediatric dentist to seek treatment support and heal her tooth.
With respect to developmental consequence, cracked molar result in deformity and changed eruption of permanent teeth, affecting teeth alignment. This trauma also weakens the enamel in teeth causing it to develop with irregularities, while also affect the development of adult tooth. It led child to undergo orthodontic treatment like braces. Further, misaligned teeth affect child in chewing of food, leading them to avoid food. Teeth plays a vital role in creating sounds that incorporate with clear speech, thus it makes challenging for the child to pronounce words in the correct manner (Tully et al, 2025). This results into frustration in child and thereby impacts their social development ability. Likewise, changes in the teeth colouring due to the untreated cracked molar affects their self-confidence which makes child to become more self-conscious about their facial gesture and lead them to avoid participate in the activities.
The Role of Registered Nurse
In Victoria, Australia registered nurses are responsible for providing preventive, therapeutic as well as advocacy to patient and ensure their safety. Under children and family Act (2005), nurses are responsible for providing protection to the vulnerable child and reduce their chances of getting harm in the future. In current situation, nurse requires to give priority to the child’s best interest protecting their basic rights and thereby encouraging development (Warren et al, 2025). It helps in understanding the whole situation and finding the reason behind her cracked molar. In Victoria, nursing guidelines are governed by AHPRA (Australian health practitioner regulation agency), which presents some standard that need to be followed by the nurse.
In the context of current scenario of child’s cracked molar nurse can begin with following standard 1 and 6. As per standard 1, nurse is responsible to critically think and analyse the nursing practice required to address the situation. Thus, 1.1 criteria of standard enables nurse to access, analyse and apply the best evidence practice to protect the child. Nurse also requires following 1.3 standard criteria to respect all culture and experience when responding to the family of child. Effective communication with child’s parent helps in understanding why they have visited pediatric dentist yet despite of noticeable change in their child (Ahpra, 2025).
Further, 6.1 criteria of standard 6 helps in offering comprehensive safe care to the child and thereby improvise the health outcomes. Following 6.3 criteria helps nurses in delegating practice aspect to other health practitioner for ensuring correct and appropriate care. Through this nurse can easily connect with the dentist professional to treat cracked molar of child and provide proper tooth care plan to the child’s parent. Current evidence based practice which nurse can follow is forensic investigation for the child to understand discomfort, social embarrassment child is facing due to the cracked molar and provided proper treatment support (Sarkar et al, 2025). On the other hand, care can be provided to the child in only one case when registered nurse has knowledge about the standards and professional guidelines. Therefore, lack of understanding in it may affect their approach to care delivery.
The mandatory report in Victoria outlines four major actions which discussed below-
Respond to an emergency: It is crucial for the nurse to screen the whole scene and provide immediate medical assistance to the child. Call for an ambulance if there is emergency situation and call police if there is a risk to health & safety of child. In current scenario, nurse should take child to pediatric dentist and collect potential witness.
Report to the authorities: Nurse should write down all the symptoms which child is complaining and report it to the Department of families, fairness and housing (DFFH) child protection as a mandatory reporting. Timely reporting provides high level of assistance in protecting child from the further risk.
Contact parents or carers: Under this action, it is crucial for the nurse to seek advice first from DFFH child protection department to contact child’s parents or carers (Report child abuse in early childhood, 2025). To avoid contacting parent is only because of allegation that parent may engaged in child abuse. However, cracked molar can be the result of child falling so nurse should contact Mia’s parent and discuss the case by following professional guidelines.
Providing ongoing support: After reporting, nurse needs to maintain record by following national law guidance.
Moreover, fair reporting can only be made when nurse is confident in their action and practice. Delays in reporting due to the systemic barriers can affect the safeguarding to child (Reavley et al, 2025).
The preventive and supportive measures are as follows-
Regular visits to pediatric dentist: Encouraging parent of Mia to visit dentist to maintain oral health. It is crucial because dentist helps in finding and treating dental issue before it turning into major issue.
Promote social interaction: Teachers at school need to create an inclusive environment that encourage child to interact with others and develop social and emotional intelligence.
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Conclusion
It has been summarised that proactive measures and suitable actions of registered nurse helps them in detecting and report child abuse case. Following professional guidelines supported nurse to understand red flags from the situation in terms of lack of social interaction, distraction in doing daily work and acute pain. This has made clear for the nurse to report whole incident to local government body in Victoria. Further, dentist visits preventive measures has been provided to child to heal her cracked molar and promote healthy development of teeth. Likewise, cultivation of inclusive culture in classroom promotes social development of child.
References
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