tsansom

I am only a second year school nurse so bear with me. I would write an incident report to protect myself if she continued to refuse to seek care. We can't make anyone go to the doctor/ER against their will. All we can do is advise. Now, if she began having futher symptoms such as shortness of breath, increased pain, decreasing level of consciousness, and vital signs going down the tubes, then, we are obligated to take emergency action.

I have not been told that I have to do home visits but I am aware that I can do them if I see a need.

I just want to scream when I think about how many screenings I have yet to do. I am in a very large school and do not have an adequate place to do hearing. I have 1200 elem. students PK-6th. Last year I had screeners come in and do most of the screenings. This year there are no screeners. I was given a nurse assist on Mondays and an RN on Wednesdays and Thursdays. They have taken my RN already and put her back at her school of 400 students where she has been for the last 17 years under title 1. Where is the equity. She is on the same pay scale as I am but I have 3 times as many students. Was told that they should have never pulled her from her school because her school is Title 1. Anyway, I have screened 8 sections of Kindergarten and done their recreenings. And have done first screenings on 4 of the 6 sections of 5th grade and completed 1 section of 1st grade. This means that I still have 8 sections of 3rd graders, 7 sections of 1st graders, 2 sections of 5th graders and my 88 preschoolers to do. Life is just no fair. I work about 10 hours a day. 10 persent of our student population is special ed so there are re-evals to do on them and I have about 20 SST referrals waiting for my attention. I have not inputed all of my medications nor have I even started on health management plans or health codes. I have made a list of students with health conditions and I have 82 asmatics, 10 students with seizures of which 3 take seizure meds daily at school. And multipe other health conditions. I have a child on continuous tube feed and another with a g=tube which receives meds and bolus feed daily. Do I have a right to whine. I absolutely do and so here it is. Wha Wha Wha!!!. I envy those school nurses that leave right on time every day and sometimes a little early on Fridays. Are there any other nurses out there in the same boat as me? I am sure there are and I feel for you. The only saving grace is that the district I work in pays well. About what I was earning in the hospital. Oh and did I mention that my students are the lowest income area in the city. I take good care of them. No one I care for goes without seeing a doctor if they don't have Medicare or CHIPS. I do a lot of referrals to community resources. I feel good that I can help these kids and their families. It is very rewarding to me. I am definately needed and make a difference. Also I get to see a lot of different medical things with this population of students. The question is, do anyone of you have a little time to spare after school that you could come volunteer some time to help me catch up? I am desperate. HA HA HA HA Just kidding.

I start out the year with a lot of donated clothes. As the year goes on, my clothing supply dwindles since some students parents do not return them. This year, I am sending home a large plastic Ziplock bag with a letter inside suggesting that parents of preK, kinder, and 1st grade students send a complete change of clothes to school to be kept in the students classroom for emergency use. I have stuck a label on each Ziplock bag for the student's name. I bought the bags out of my clinic budget from our districts catalogue. I will let everyone know how this ends up working out. I don't sweat it if a kid wets his pants. It's just going to happen and it is definately the parents job to potty train. Any child that poops his pants has to wait for a parent to pick him up and take him home to clean him up. With so many lawsuits out there, I wouldn't dare take a chance on undressing a child. It's not our job anyway. It is our job to see that the child gets the care he needs.

Thanks everyone for all the helpful ideas. I met with the building planner. It's going to be good. I will have a separate storage closet, a large testing room with acoustics, a sink in the clinic and a full bathroom. It will be located across the hall from the office. It's going to be a large clinic. And possibly my own tempature control. I couldn't be happier. Wish me luck through cause I have 81 asthmatics and they will be tearing down 1/3rd of the building at a time and building on top of what they tore down. That ought to kick up my asthmatics really well. I guess you gotta take the good with the bad.

Looking for someone out there who receives The Journal of School Nursing that may have these articles. I am not yet a member but I need to be. Thank you bergren.

It's ok if you don't know what you are doing cause that's what the forum is for. You could start a thread by asking a question. Most questions are the same questions that we all have. I am glad you responded.

I am still hoping that someone will respond and give me some input.

I'm waiting to see if anyone else will respond

For a whole year I visited this site and read the dialogues and benefited from what was posted. I didn't join the forum until a few days ago. I feel really bad that I just read and didn't bother to share. I just noticed that there are over 3,000 nurses at this moment viewing the posts but very few posting. Come on nurses......we are missing out because you are taking and not giving back. I have read all the posts on here and wish there were more because we can learn so much from each other and give support to one another. Take the time to join and share. We need you. Maybe you don't think you have anything to share but surely with 3,000 nurses out there viewing you will be able to help who knows how many.

Before you take the position, check and see what the student to teacher ratio is and how much the teachers help with all those diaper changes. In my school, I have a Life Skills class that has 4 students. They all wear diapers and most have to be lifted to a changing table. They can be very heavy....like dead weight. When the teachers assistant is absent, I have to change the female students. The teacher is male and he usually does the lifting, even though they have a lift, just because it's quicker. I found the diaper changes to be difficult to do because of the weight of the kids or shape of them and most are not able to help you. By the time I did one of them I was sweating.

What would you like your clinic to be like if you could choose any design features you wanted. Need some ideas before this Monday. My school is being rebuilt and my principal wants my input into the clinic. I have no idea the square footage or anything. I don't know what to ask for. I like the clinic design I have now but what I would really like as part of the clinic would be a small sound proof or almost sound proof room where I could do hearing screenings so I wouldn't have to leave the clinic to do them. Does anyone think that would be strange to ask for. I have a terrible time finding a quite place to do my hearing screenings. It seems like it would help save time if you are screening both vision and hearing at the same time since I usually screen vision in the clinic. Tell me what you like about your clinic and what you don't like. This is the only clinic I have had and would really appreciate some input from some of you guys.

You did absolutely the right thing. Try to put it out of your mind.

I ask lots of questions about where the child goes, who the child spends the night with, who they may share clothing items. And someone mentioned to me that they had the hardest time with reoccurance until they treated the car area where the child usually sits. Never thought of that one. Hummm Another school nurse told me about a Robi comb that you can get at Walgreens that zaps the eggs when you comb it through dry hair and the eggs come off. She uses it with her own kids. Never heard of that before. The hardest time I have with parents is that they don't do the 7-10 day retreat. There is prescription lice medication/shampoo for resistent lice. I am not sure if that works better. One thing I noticed is that usually the childs best friend shares the lice or students that sit next to them.

I put one pair of gloves, wipes, bandaides, safety pins, tooth keepers, pupil referral slips, and this year I included some peppermints.