Mrs.B

THANK YOU FOR THE COMMENTS I Appreciate all your advice I am going to take tho position and give it my best shot. It is really great to be able to bounce questions off people who are not bias one way or another. I am looking forward to having a normal sleep schedule too. THANKS AGAIN

Thank you all for taking the time to help me out! Arwen, you made me remember something...the spot where i was thinking about having the meetings isn't part of the Ob unit. It's a teaching center where they have things like CPR classes, staff education etc. also the Lamaze classes are held there. It occurs to me that in order to get permission to have meetings there, I would probably be better off contacting the hospital administration directly and perhaps CCing the NM the letter. Also, i'm glad to hear that there are some hospitals out there that host LLL meetings and that my idea isn't completely absurd! Thanks again :)

Hello Everyone, I've lurked on this site for about 4 years and i'm finally posting something :) Anyway, I am an RN not in practice at the moment because i stay home with my two little ones. I am a volunteer breastfeeding counselor with La Leche League with my goal for the near future to become a certified Lactation Consultant. My question for all of you wonderful women who work in L & D is this: Do you know of any La Leche League groups who have their meetings in your hospital? I lead meetings once a month (they are held at a local library) but i was thinking i would approach the OB/GYN NM at the local hospital (where i used to work in Med/Surg actually) to see if they would like to "hostess" the meetings. They do have breastfeeding classes available for pregnant moms but La Leche League is more of a support group than a class per se so it wouldn't really conflict with that. What is the best way to get an OB/GYN NM to talk to me about this? Call her, send her a letter, show up?? I have called her in the past to offer an "in service" to her nurses about what La Leche League is/does and never received a call back from her. Thanks so much for any help you can offer! -Deb

Disclaimer: I am not an OB nurse ( I am just a humble School nurse! However, I am 22 wks with my first and have been doing a lot of research on the topic of birth etc. From what I understand, in Europe most births do not take place at home, they take place in birthing centers attended by midwives. Only high-risk moms deliver in hospitals with MDs. It appears to me that many of the interventions that are "offered" in our hospitals are not "evidenced based practice." That many of the interventions are done routinely for no more reason than, "it's always been done that way." I personally know that I would not be comfortable with a home birth (b/c frankly, I think I'm gonna want that epidural) but at the same time I am not comfortable with a hospital birth (because I don't want to be cajoled into accepting unecessary interventions). WE NEED MORE BIRTHING CENTERS! I think what dayray said sums up our medical culture very nicely. Everybody is so used to instant gratification (fast food, cell phones, speeding on the highway etc.) that they just assume that faster is better. Isn't it better to let nature take its course sometimes?

Yikes! I was so furious when I originally posted I think I didn't make myself too clear on the situation. I don't DO the physicals, I just check the kids off saying that they HAD physicals. We have a school NP (not an MD) and she does PEs for us. We also allow students to go to their private MDs to get physicals. When we are doing PEs here at school, I help with the BPs, urine dips, hts and wts only. I'm not the one doing the actual exam. Do you think that I should still be concerned about medical liablity when all I'm doing is signing a paper that says they HAD a PE? I thought that wasn't too much of a big deal but I'd like your opinions. Anyway, I was really asking about what your procedures are. Do you only have one day a year where kids must show up for PEs? We do them before every sport starts during the school year and we do one day over the summer for the football players. Our PEs are good for a year too but a lot of the kids never get them. My point was, should I wash my hands of the whole thing and let the AD worry about who is eligible and who isn't? Isn't the liability ultimately the coach's if a kids drops dead on the field b/c he had an underlying cardiac condition and it wasn't found b/c he never had a PE? My job description doesn't go any further in regards to sports physicals than saying the nurse is responsible for scheduling sports physicals. My problem was agreeing to do more than that. I admit, that was totally my fault and won't be happening next year. I was new and was trying to be a people pleaser...my bad. So for all the nurses that said that their PEs are good for a year, my question is this: Do you maintain a list of athletes that have had PEs or does the AD do that? Do the coaches come to you to check if their athletes are ok to play? How involved is your role when it comes to sports PEs? Hey sorry for being so all-over the place...I really do have a legit excuse...I'm 12 weeks pregnant! So please forgive my hormonal rages :)

Ok, many of you already know that I am a new school nurse. My biggest pet peeve has become sports PEs. The nurse that worked at my school before retired before I was even hired so I was never given any orientation or advice as to how to do ANYTHING. I would appreciate any advice any of the middle/high school nurses could give me on the best, most efficient way to get sports PEs accomplished. The AD at my school is, well, let's just say, a few sandwiches short of a picnic and has been little or no help. Apparently, the old nurse was something of an "enigma" and nobody has any clue how she went about things. For example, when a student played a sport in the fall and had a PE and wants to play a spring sport what is the procedure at your school. They have me "re-checking" every athlete, checking their blood pressure and making sure they haven't been injured between seasons in any way. I give the student a slip of paper to then give to their coach to let the coach know that they are ok to play. First of all, this method is just not working for me. All the kids seem to wait until the last second and I end up spending half the day rechecking kids. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the coaches seem to not really care who is cleared and who isn't and are letting kids practice who haven't had PEs AT ALL. Is this just happening at my school? Isn't this a huge liablity issue? What are all of you doing at your schools to prevent this? I thank you for any and all suggestions you can give me! AAAACCCKKKK! PS. I'm in NY so if anyone knows any of the laws or State ED rules about this stuff or where to get info that would be great!

The no breakfast thing can be tricky. I would say the majority of my students c/o H/A in the late morning hours haven't had breakfast or anything to drink for that matter! I have noticed that it tends to be the 7th and 8th graders most often c/o the no-breakfast headache. My 9-12th graders have usually figured out on their own that no food = feeling lousy and go to the cafeteria before coming to me. Anyway, I have one student with chronic H/A that has an OTC script. He is recieving in-school couseling for the first time this year. As soon as he started counseling, the headaches miraculously disappeared! Like Bergren said, I would always fully assess a student esp if it's their first c/o h/a. If it's a frequent flyer, I would speak with the parents and seriously recommend a medical if not psychiatric work up. I'm glad NY requires MD script and parental approval to give out OTC meds. I'm not sure it reduces visits to the nurses office though. Not at my school at least!

The CSEA employees may get treated better but under their contract I make less than some of the custiodians and secretaries! Our nurse in the elementary school has been in the district for almost 10 years and doesn't even make $40,000/year! As a new employee, I don't even make $30,000! By joining NYSUT we were hoping to get a pay raise and a bit more respect. In CSEA we don't feel like we're considered "professionals." I'm not looking to get paid the same as a teacher but I am looking to make a salary that isn't laughable...

It's the new school nurse again!! A teacher just asked me to talk to a student about his hygiene. Actually, he basically told me that the kid plain old stank!! What is the best way to go about telling a "smelly" kid that he's got to clean up? BTW - he's a seventh grader...

The teachers in my district are in NYSIT (I think that's how you spell it). I am aware of several school nurses in other districts nearby that are in that particular union. So nobody likes the idea of ALL school nurses in the country or in their state in a union together?

Wow! Thank you so much! My comment about the ANA had to do with ALL school nurses throughout the country not just in my district

I am in a very small district in Suffolk County, New York. I am one of two RNs for 1,800 students. We are in the secretaries union (CSEA). The other nurse in my district tried about 2 years ago to get into the teacher's union but was shut down by our superintendant. He said that nurses are not professionals. He is retiring this January so we are going to give it another shot with the new superintendant. Does anybody think that it's about time the ANA represented school RNs? Maybe through our state unions or something, like nurses in the hospital? I don't know enough about how unions work. Does anyone have a good resource they could point me towards??