How busy is your office?

[scrubsrn24]

First year school nurse here! Loving the job, love my kiddos and my staff is great, but my office sees an excessive number of students each day. On average, how many visits do you have in your offices each day, and how many students are in your school? Any tips on cutting down unnecessary visits? (i.e. "I bumped my leg two days ago, can I have ice?", chapped lips, etc.)

On average, I have 45-50 encounters every day and have 480 students. That number does not include my scheduled medication visits.

[A1hamRN]

After reading all that I feel really blessed... I see about 25-30 kiddos a day about 6-7 daily meds. Only send home 1-3 kids a day home if any, so that goes to show you about 75% are nothing major bumps, scrapes, papercuts, rash, sore throat or cough. One of the other nurses in our district sees 40-60 kids a day we both have 575-600 kids, which I find completely riduculous! How in the world are you suppose to do all the other things school nurses do seeing that many kids that don't really need to come in? Vision/hearing screens, immunizations, med logs, health education classes, etc.. I tell my teachers that I chart every visit about 3x (daily log, student log on and nurse notes) so unless they are burning up, bleeding, or throwing up they don't need to send for every papercut. My teachers are awesome compared to some of yours I guess.... We have one nurse in the district who uses like a bar graft to chart how many visits each class has and turned it into a sort of contest where the class with the least visits gets a classroom prize, that has worked pretty well for her