SCHOOL NURSE'S DAY

• NASN State Director-Elect- Kathryn Bouziane
• President-Elect- Amanda Santamaria
• Secretary- Elizabeth Starling

No one knows what a school nurse does until you become one. It’s a love-hate relationship with your job as a school nurse. Most “other” nurses think it’s a “cushy” job filled with handing out Band-Aids and ice packs. Boy, they are SO WRONG. You just cannot make up what goes on in the school setting each and every day.

School nurses are the Lone Ranger, the ONLY healthcare provider on campus. Everyone comes to the school nurse, from kiddos straight from car pool to the school nurse ‘cause momma said to “Try to make it and if you can’t, go see the nurse.” The teachers come in to “feel” if they have a fever, to check their blood pressures, listen to their cough, ask, “What should I do about…?” We are the jack-of-all trades, Master of none.

We love the autonomy most days, but the autonomy fuels the helplessness and overwhelming feeling of failure as a nurse because we just cannot do “IT ALL.” You try to prepare for what walks through your door. It could be a student who is malingering with a headache or stomachache, a student barely able to speak, their asthma is so bad, a student who is confused with a low blood sugar, or a teacher who is gray, diaphoretic, and tachypneic with chest pain. In the back of our minds we are thinking, is this teacher gonna code on me right here in the school? Really??

All the while, you have two parents on hold and a teacher tapping their foot, waiting for you to check their temperature and look at their throat. One parent wants to talk to you about making sure their child has sunblock on before they go outside and do not forget if the heat index is above XX she cannot go outside for recess. The other parent on hold wants to preview the puberty video. Oops in comes a parent furious because their child said you DID…….

School nurses have to deal with what is in front of them even if they have never encountered it before. Students are coming to school with chronic health conditions that require more and more nursing care, all the while helicopters fly around and want you to do something their way, not the way the orders are written. The school health room is a primary care site for many students. Just when you are feeling good about the care you deliver, a helicopter dive-bombs you. You want to burst into tears and run far, far away.

Today, parents work two and three jobs to stay afloat and cannot take off to come pick up their child when they are sick. They may have only had three “sick days” in this six-month period and today is day four- they will lose their job if they come pick up their child. School nurses have to balance these situations with “is this neglect” or is “this a knowledge deficit?” It is easy to play the blame game until we are in those parents’ shoes.

The endless paperwork and meetings pile up until you want to scream. You think, “Why am I doing this? I could be making so…. Much more money working at (fill in the blank). I’d get paid for staying over, I’d earn overtime.” Then you stop and think about your students, the ones your heart melts for, the ones that drive you insane, but really just need your reassurance, the trends you have noticed and sent the child to their physician because they drink and pee ALL of the TIME, only to find out they now have Type I diabetes. The child you assisted to obtain glasses so they can see the board. Remember the positive and do not let the negatives wear you down. The paperwork will go on forever and they will find you buried under a stack of immunizations and IHPs.

We have such a small window to make a positive impact on the students in our care. Take a moment to reflect on the positives and forget about the negatives. School nursing is a roller coaster… You climb the hill slowly, and then you fly down the hill with your hair flaming behind, you cannot hold on, but YOU CAN HOLD ON because you are a SCHOOL NURSE.

The cycle continues repeatedly until the school year ends. Then one day over the summer, you run into the student that gets under your skin and they run up and give you a great big hug and introduce you to their parents as, “This is MY school nurse.”

We are way too busy to play cards. They cards would be covered in vomit, pee, poop, blood, snot, tears, some of them our own tears. Thank you for choosing to be a SCHOOL NURSE AND FOR WORKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA SCHOOLS

Dawn MacAdams, MSN, RN, NCSN

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