Nurse Practitioners in the school setting

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Hi All,

I am leaning towards going the FNP route for my masters and was wondering if any current NP’s in a school setting can share their experiences with me such as is it worth it?

I don’t see myself leaving the school setting however should I ever, I would most likely go into family practice. I really feel like I could use the knowledge from a FNP program in my day to day school nurse tasks but would love to hear from other nurse practitioners in a school setting.

Thanks!

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I am leaning towards doing the same thing. So I'd love to hear what people have to say!

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Specializes in ED, School Nurse.

I was just coming here to ask this same question. Has anyone ever gone for your FNP (or any NP) while working as a school nurse? How do clinical hours happen?

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Have you looked into school-based health clinics? I'm an RN (full time at my school) and at my school site, we have a full-time clinic staffed with NP's and PA's as well as mental health therapist, a health educator and a clinic coordinator. We all share one big area with our own offices within the clinic. I'm the only one in the clinic that works for the school district and they work for a non-profit organization but we all work together as a team. The NP's and PA's provide many services such as STI testing/treatments, blood work, long term birth control, concussion diagnosis, ADHD diagnosis and medication prescriptions, and many more services. They have even placed stitches on a couple of my students. We all help each other and work together as a team.

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Specializes in ICU/community health/school nursing.

I don't suspect you'd be able to use your FNP in a school setting (you would not get paid what you want). A district that had a roving FNP to see all the "might be pinkeye" rule outs, though...that would be amazing. Without a medical director in Texas you would not be able to write scripts though. It may be different in other places. And you might check on whether you need the FNP or a PNP for work - it seems ridiculous but at this time in Texas the children's hospitals only want PNPs (and precious few of those) because the PNP can see newborns.

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Specializes in Med-Surg/Tele/ER/Urgent Care.

l’m a FNP in a couple of School Based Health Centers, 2 other NPs are Pediatric NPs. I work in a state with independent practice. As FNPs we also see newborns, & do well child checks. As FNP I can see staff which the PNP can not. My salary is the same as private practice, 6 figures.

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Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

More info on School based health centers including location map found at:

https://www.hrsa.gov/our-stories/school-health-centers/index.html

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Specializes in ICU/community health/school nursing.
On 5/23/2020 at 9:55 PM, PollywogNP said:

l’m a FNP in a couple of School Based Health Centers, 2 other NPs are Pediatric NPs. I work in a state with independent practice. As FNPs we also see newborns, & do well child checks. As FNP I can see staff which the PNP can not. My salary is the same as private practice, 6 figures.

That makes my heart happy for you. The ambulatory care NP situation in Texas is pretty bad right now....

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