Preperation for School Nursing

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Hello All!

I am hoping someone where wil be able to give me some advice! I am a registered nurse and I have a year experience in an ICU Stepdown. Currently, I work at Miami Dade Area Health Education Center (AHEC), as a health education coordinator. I am also working on my Master's in Public Health (Health Promotion, Disease Prevention). I have always been interested in school nursing. I have a year of school left and I was wondering if you could give me any suggestions on how to better my chances or prepare to apply for school nursing jobs? I'm not sure which state I want to work in yet. I know jobs are pretty limited! I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks!

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Specializes in CVICU, ED.

Just to let you know right up front, I am not a school nurse, but I have looked at some of the job postings in my state when listed on the city/county websites. In my state, anyone who wants to work as a school nurse must get certification as such and courses are offered 2-3x a year. I bet you could find the info you need by contacting your board of nursing or googling the requirements for your state.

My state requires fingerprinting and a criminal background check before taking the NCLEX so you will probably have to do this as well if not already done.

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Specializes in Pediatrics.

The best way to break into school nursing is to apply for nurse substitute...this will get a foot in the door and you will see if its something that you could see yourself doing fulltime. You will rarely see job postings for school nurses because they tend to hire within. I started as a school nurse substitute last month and they have kept me busy. I absolutely LOVE it! They only downside is that it pays practically nothing :eek:, but like I said, its a foot in the door and its a great job!

Good Luck!

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Specializes in Med-Surg, School Nurse.

Might want to also post this on the School Nurse area of the Specialty section.

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I suppose you could lobby your senator so there might actually be some money put back into schools to actually hire a school nurse, so then you could actually apply to a job.

i guess that's a start

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