How Are You Passing Time?

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We have about 45% of our kids on campus, and most of my high needs kids are doing virtual learning.  I was super busy with paperwork and beginning of the year stuff at first, but now that I've finished all that, I find myself wondering what to do next.  I don't even have any daily meds!  I call all our absences daily, keep track of our very small number of quarantining kids, Lysol the doorknobs for every classroom, change my bulletin board monthly, and pretty much anything else that I can think of, but what else?  I am seeing about 2-5 kids a day.  That's it!

Anyone else feel like they were preparing for a train wreck of a year only to find themselves wondering what to do all day???

Specializes in Home Health,Dialysis, MDS, School Nurse.

We are 100% in person, so I'm as busy as ever.   Getting ready to start the rapid testing program whenever our shipment gets here.  Getting handwashing demo's ready for the elementary.   Plus all the usual stuff.  

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Specializes in Geriatric Home Health, High School Nurse.
Just now, Eleven011 said:

Getting ready to start the rapid testing program whenever our shipment gets here

Ooooo....let us know how that goes!  I was reading about this possibility for school clinics but it said we would need a CLIA license.  Is that something you got or is it different in your state?  I am also wondering if this crosses the line between nursing and diagnosing.  What are your thoughts on that?

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Specializes in Home Health,Dialysis, MDS, School Nurse.

At the last DOH webinar I watched, they stated the license was covered by some agreement/arrangement for all schools for this time period.   Not quite sure on the logistics, but they said it was covered.   On the diagnosing - ya, I'm not sure on how they are getting around that, but our DOH is encouraging us to do it.   The consent we have signed does state that we are not acting as a medical provider and that they should seek advice from their provider for any care they might need.   

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Specializes in School nursing.

My school was Remote+ with high needs in person, but due to rising numbers, we are going full Remote for at least 2 weeks, but I know it will be longer.

But I'm still busier than ever. I was not seeing many kids (visits from my in person group were 2-5 a day, including a couple of a diabetic students), but my upper level work is piling on making me own the School Nurse Leader title that I have as the senior nurse here. I'm the COVID point of contact and heavily involved in the health planning (which I am very glad to be as I know many nurses aren't!) and I send out our daily screener for staff/students and track it as it is completed starting at 6 AM and triage those that fail it (which I will still do for staff looking ahead). I'm also working on getting surveillance testing done on site weekly for all in person staff and students as part of the transition back to Remote + and then eventually hybrid.  

I'm also working on 504s now and still working on getting updated health paperwork in the world where I can't send home physical forms and folks are so overwhelmed by email...

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Specializes in School Nursing, Pediatrics.

You could also do some CEU's on school time! I have been doing a few!

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Specializes in School nurse.
On 10/20/2020 at 7:59 PM, laflaca said:

I also have only about 25% of the kids on campus any given time (about half came back for hybrid instruction, but they're split into two groups) and I also have been seeing 2-5 kids/day. 

However, calling the absences, keeping track of test results and everyone who's on home isolation, figuring out how to communicate all this to various administrators and support staff appropriately, and answering random COVID questions from every category of staff person and community member is taking up 75% of my day (!).  Explaining the timeline and why kids with congestion or a sore throat have to stay home x 10 days is really time consuming - if we had more kids on campus, I don't know how I'd manage. 

Otherwise, I'm doing hearing/vision for special ED kids who don't have a recent screening, plus the usual hounding of people about vaccines ?

YUP!

All of this. Before we had kids back in person I had some time to get my clinic super organized and take care of some cleaning/purging/organizing tasks that had been neglected. So that was nice.

But now it is all of the above. Even though I have less visit numbers per day each visit is a much bigger deal and taking more time. I find myself with very little down time. 

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