Professional development days

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I looked through the topics and couldn't find anything related to this. As I am paid on the teacher salary I have to participate in the professional development (PD) days that is provided through the district. Im looking to see if your district provides PD topics related to nursing. Our director is pretty good and trying to find topics for the student support staff, but seeing if anybody has any suggestions on topics and where to find potential instructors. TIA

Our PD is rather strange - I work at a small private school with two campuses and each campus has a nurse and counselor. On PD days, the teachers have a full schedule of meetings and trainings provided by the school, but none of it is applicable to the health/wellness staff. So sometimes, we actually present to the teachers (stress coping strategies for students, how to use EPI pen etc) but usually we just meet privately at a Starbucks and gossip. I can't say it's the worst, but I'd rather have a half-day lol

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2 hours ago, ruby_jane said:

You'll need to look at your own policy.

Our contract is 187 days. Most of the PD has been planned by the health services manager; we have one day at the end of the year to shut things down on campus and one more day after Memorial Day that belongs to health services.

We are on the same contract as the teachers, when they are working we are working, despite if the kids are there or not. That is frustrating part at times as the topics usually provided are not related to my professional development. I am looking and trying to find topics that will be pertinent to the nursing staff. Unfortunately, we don't have a health service manager in my district to help arrange these topics, our director isn't in the health field. Thank you for responding :)

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1 minute ago, jnemartin said:

Our PD is rather strange - I work at a small private school with two campuses and each campus has a nurse and counselor. On PD days, the teachers have a full schedule of meetings and trainings provided by the school, but none of it is applicable to the health/wellness staff. So sometimes, we actually present to the teachers (stress coping strategies for students, how to use EPI pen etc) but usually we just meet privately at a Starbucks and gossip. I can't say it's the worst, but I'd rather have a half-day lol

I wish we could have a Starbucks day! We usually do teacher training on a staff meeting. I am going to suggest to my director to include a time to do these on one of the PD days before the start of the school year. That should help with a half of a day of training. Thank you for the suggestion!

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3 hours ago, AdobeRN said:

We have 70+ nurses in the district so we have our own PD days with nursing topics. Our nursing coordinator plans it. Out of the 6 or 7 PD days thru the year we usually meet for at least 5 of them - if we don't meet it is considered a "work day" and we have to work in our clinics using that time to get caught up with paperwork or with whatever we need to do on our campus. We are no longer are required to attend the teacher PD classes.

What topics do you cover when you do your own PD days? Thank you for your response ?

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2 hours ago, LikeTheDeadSea said:

Big nurse group in my very large district, we arrange our own meeting or speaker.

Thank you for your response! What topics do you cover with the speaker? I am trying to plan something out more like this rather than to sit through some of the teacher topics.

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Specializes in pediatrics, School LVN.

Here we only have the RN and myself. We never have any PD training planned. We look at what the psychologist and social workers are doing, if it applies we sit in, if nothing on the agenda applies to us we do our own thing. Last PD we had breakfast, talked about self care for a bit and then discussed some plans for next school year. The last couple of hours we did a train for the instructional aides on correct use of an epi-pen, and inhalers, we went over seizure and choking protocol and heimlich. The RN always says we could play monopoly in our Pjs for PD days and nobody would notice.

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25 minutes ago, beachynurse said:

Our school district is rather large, so we have over 100 nurses and clinic assistants, so we have our own professional development days. These days are all geared twords nursing issues. I look forward to them to get to see the other nurses.

What topics do you cover? That's what I want to do for our district ?

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33 minutes ago, Militarywife said:

I wish we could have a Starbucks day! We usually do teacher training on a staff meeting. I am going to suggest to my director to include a time to do these on one of the PD days before the start of the school year. That should help with a half of a day of training. Thank you for the suggestion!

Yes! It's nice to connect with the other staff. We discuss issues we're running into, specific cases, questions about scope, whatever. It's very informal. This year I implemented a new sex ed program, and was hoping for a lot of help/support during our PD meetings, but I quickly realized the culture of these "PD" days was more about connecting and unwinding, not working. Like I said, not the WORST way to spend a Friday afternoon, but it just depends on what you hope to get out of it

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We catch up on paper work, revise polices, or gather around the computers and do state mandated CEs as a group. (There are plenty of peds and vaccine related CE through Western Schools or CE direct)

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Specializes in Peds.
5 hours ago, MHDNURSE said:

I have had to go to all the PDs with the teachers and they NEVER apply to me. I always feel like it is a complete waste of time.

Same here....

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Specializes in School Nursing.
3 hours ago, Militarywife said:

What topics do you cover? That's what I want to do for our district ?

I'll PM you!

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