Experience before school nursing

Enough experience so that you feel confident with your assessment and decision making skills - as a school nurse you are usually out there on your own. Some of that has to do with your own sense of independence and confidence - I have met a couple of people who went to school nursing straight out of school, seemed to do OK, but I would not recommend.

Also, I don't really think it is necessary to do med surg before pediatrics if you plan on focusing on peds. My first job out of school was pediatric oncology.

Good luck.

I think you should have some experience under your belt before school nursing. Maybe a year or so at least. (I had 17 years!) The thing with school nursing is big things don't happen that often, but when they do, they are unexpected and you are on your own. It also helps to have good organizational skills, good people skills and the ability to advocate for yourself. You will more than likely be the only health professional in your building.

BTW-I had no peds experience other than parenting. All of my background was in med-surg.

I worked for 23 years in hospitals and home health before I got my school nurse certificate and took the plunge. I had subbed intermittently in schools though and it was a real learning experience. There is no way that I would have been ready after my first year in a hospital to go into school nursing. Of course I was on orthopedics so I did not have a variety of experiences. I think if you have a school nurse certificate you might be ok after a year of med surg because you have clinical time while you are in school in a school setting. Not all of school nursing involves peds. You take care of staff also, and some of the students are basically adults in high school settings. I think your plan sounds like a good one. Home health prepared me more than anything because you are on your own with all kinds of unusual situations and only what you have in your bag to take care of it. In the hospital there is always someone to call.

I worked for a full year on a small Pediatric unit in the hospital setting. I got fed up with some of the issues there, then I looked into school nursing because of the schedule (never thought I would even consider school nursing, to tell you the truth). So I have been doing school nursing for a month, with 1 year prior experience in Peds. But like everybody else has said, it all depends on your comfort level and own experiences. Good luck!!

I've been doing this now for 4yrs and was a sub while still in the hospital for a few yrs before that-it helped. I had 5yrs SICU and 10yrs ER experience then went to School Nursing. Quite the jump but my ER experience was the best to prep me for this job. It is an urban community and very poor so often I am their only medical resource until I can talk them into further evaluations.

The Emergency Dept. is a great place to gain assessment skills and really feel comfortable with who you are as a nurse. as another poster said, you need to advocate for your students, staff and families-sometimes between them as well and the ED helped me get there. Good luck!