Long time psych RN nervous!

Specialties School

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I have an interview this Friday for a school nurse position in a large, urban school district. The school nurses here cover at least 2 schools, and I don't know which schools the position is for.

I have been an RN for 11 years, and while I have experience in a burn center for adults and kids and an ED, the majority of my work experience is psychiatric nursing (mainly adults, but also child and adolescent), including teaching psychiatric nursing clinicals. I love psychiatric nursing, but I need a change in my life right now. I have volunteered extensively at my child's school, and absolutely love being there and working with the kids.

After reading pages and pages of posts on this site, and researching other school nursing sites, I feel unprepared for this interview. I have been told that I will be given multiple scenarios and asked to write a SOAP note on one of the scenarios. I write narrative notes on my patients every shift, but we don't use a specific format. I'm so nervous about this! Any tips and advice you seasoned school nurses could give me would be greatly appreciated. Will my psych nursing experience come in handy here? Any special areas I should study up on (concussions, IDDM, trach care, cath procedures, immunizations)?

Thanks in advance!

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With your extensive work experience, you should do well in the school nurse position. You should have some pretty good professional judgement skills by now and those will serve you well on any interview! Best of luck!

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We don't write SOAP here. That's hospital stuff, although I find myself often charting loosely in the same format.

Much of my job is Psych. The other half is triage. I would say you are more than qualified.

What don't you feel prepared about?

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