Holy Shmoley

The one middle school I was in it could be as high a 90 per day.

There are interventions you can make that will decrease the non nurse visits so you can conentrate on the kids with chronic illness, health education and health promotion.

You can find many of them on the forum. One of the best is to make sure that teachers have supplies in the classroom for basic first aid - bandaids etc. Keep an eye one where most of the kids are coming from. Some teachers send kids without screening them. Set clear expectations that it is everyone's desired goal for kids to be in class, learning.

Make sure not to just rebuff the frequent fliers - they may be testing you out to see if they can trust you with stuff going on in theri lives, like bullying, domestic abuse, depression.

Welcome to school nursing and good luck.

So, I sat with the nursing coordinator today to go over what to expect with 2 other new hires. We of course went over the basics; physical forms for kindergarten, vision/hearing screening for 3rd graders, epi pen, diastat, glucagon pen etc... Then she handed out last years clinic log of how many students monthly visited the clinic. Is it a lot or is it just me to see that there are over 300 and sometimes over 400 visits PER MONTH! Wow, that overwhelms me just thinking about it. Makes me feel like I will never leave the clinic, EVER! Any words of wisdom out there?

Absolutely. My last school I routinely saw 65 to 75 students per day. I routinely topped 1500/month. And you're right--I NEVER got out of the clinic. Some days I would see 20-25 students JUST IN THE 1PM HOUR~ This was in a school of about 900 students. Our population was transient, violent, gang-ridden and enjoyed all the trappings of poverty. THese kids would go at it every day and wouldn't stop until blood(and teeth!) were drawn. I called 911 AT LEAST once a month. The actual bigger problem was that most of these kids had inaquate health and dental care. I regularly saw kids with mental health issues, bullying issues(on both sides), serious home problems, hunger, sleep deprivation, untreated illness or injuries, and horribly corroded teeth. A school nurse can only do so much and I tried my best to help, but there were so many of them and only one of me. When you're seeing 70 kids per day you only have 3-4 minutes to assess, treat,and get them back in class. Of course, there are times it takes longer than that to deal with something, but you really have to stay organized and manage your time.

Now Im in a small elementary school with about 350 students. I see on average 28-40 kids in a day. So maybe 800 in a month. I still don't get out of hte clinic much, but at least I'm getting lunch every day now. And I do have time for the occasional walk in the halls (as long as nobody is vomiting and nobody's blood sugar is crashing. Oy!)