Online Courses, CEU's for School Nsg?

[84RN]

I'm considering a part-time job-sharing position with the school nurse at my kids' charter school. The school has grades 6-12. My experience has been most recently: 6 years of home health (adult, medicare patients), and years ago: hospital in ICU and L&D.

Do you know of any online courses or CEU's specifically for school nursing? Even an overview of First Aid would be helpful, I think. I have personal experience with type 1 diabetes, have 2 kids with it and managed pumps, MDI, everything for almost 13 years. But anything else, not much.

[ruby_jane, BSN, RN]

Welcome to the school nurse world! We have saltines!

Go to the NASN website and see if you can find anything there. I recommend their "School Nursing: A Comprehensive Text." You might check to see if a copy of that is in the office you'll share. Mine came with the clinic.

Check your children's hospital for courses you can take. Some are free. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention publishes the Pink Book about vaccines and the ACIP (I think) publishes the vaccine schedule and catch-up schedule. Search your state department of health for the mandatory vaccines per grade and also what a parent would do to exempt a student from vaccines.

Much of what we do is focused assessments (your stethoscope will be your friend), medication management, sorting out what needs to leave immediately versus what can stay until the end of the day. And screening. Hearing/vision/scoliosis - and you may have to attend a class to be certified. Review your policies for things like mandatory dismissal (ours includes fever over 100.0, conjunctivitis, and repeated, witnessed emesis). You'll do fine!

[peacockblue]

NASN offers some nice CEU's and if you are a member, many are free.

[84RN]

Thank you! I've been helping with the screenings (hearing, vision, BMI, scoliosis) for a few years, and she told me there are a lot of district compliance stuff that is required. Documentation just comes with nursing, no matter what area, lol. But it's a LOT better than having hours of computer work at home in the evening for home health.

[Stars2017]

I started as a substitute school nurse this fall. I felt silly but enrolled in a basic first aid course. It was good, through AHA. Then I took the PEARS class which was great. There is an advanced first aid class being out together nearby and I am going to try to enroll in that. I think people assume as a nurse we know all of the first aid....in my case, we never covered first aid in nursing school. A nurse I was talking to the other day said she took an emt course and highly recommended it as a school nurse. I had previously looked into it but the classes I found in our area currently are in the evenings lol 6pm -10pm, doesn't work well for me at this time so I'm going to keep looking around.