fireball98

I wear scrubs. I used to be a substitute surse and some schools had scrubs and some street clothes. I never saw a nurse in buisness casual it was more relaxed than that. My school teachers just can't wear jeans except on special fridays. I was going to ask my princial if I could wear street clothes but for now I am good with the scrubs. Some days a wear slacks with my scrub tops, usually when I am behind in doing the laundry!

i think that you can't say anything to the other nurse due to confidentiality. if the other school was in your district then maybe you could share. i personally do not remove anything from a student’s hair. if i see it they get sent home. i have been allowing kids back when they have been treated with the shampoo and i see a major decrease in nits. i have had problems at my school with triplets and a family with one girl and twin girls. both families of three have been passing it around to their 6 classrooms! in a school with 22 classrooms that is a big chunk of the kids. one child was asked if his mom washed his pillow case and he said he did not have onel many of these kids cannot afford the laundry mat when i find lice so it is a big hardship on them.

I have $300 a year budget for my grade school of 520 kids. I came in last year as the first RN the school has had. The school did not have a bp cuff, cpr mask and a lot of other essential items. I had to bring in a lot of my own items. The biggest problem for me last year was bags for ice. I don't have a freezer in my room so I have to get ice from the caffeteria. I finally bought a $89.00 roll of ice bags this year and I am so excited! Last week I had to order disposable underware to have for the kids who wet their pants. This year I had a nebulizer donated so that has been wonderfull to have. I use School Nurse Supply INC. If anyone needs a list of what I order I would love to pass it on to you.

I am starting my 3rd school year. I think you need to make sure to jump right in on immunizations as quickly as possible. whaen that is done jump right into screenings or you will never finish. Also schedule you extra resources early (dental, outside agencies for vision and hearing checks) last year I started at this scholl 6 weeks in and was waitlisted for everything. The last week of school 7 kids got their free glasses. I would have loved to do that for them in september. Are you in a big district or kinda on your own. I have worked in both. I had to create all of my own forms here and can help you if you need it. ([email protected]). good luck and ask tons of question to me or to these blogs you first weeks. (try to not ask a ton to your supervisor and come in more confident!) Good luck to you I love this job and hope you do to!

I did not have to go through that where I am I was just given the one salary. Here they do not pay that much attention to the nurse! HP

thank you to everyone who replied to my posts. i am happy to say that with about 118 kids out of compliance when i started i am down to 3!!!!! i still have to review a bunch of charts that had the correct number of shots but i have not checked the dates yet. so i will find a few more! why do doctors give 1 year shots at 11 months!!! it is so frustrating. my school did allow me to hold out kids and take them off of bus riding lists if there shots were not up to date. one child miss a big chunk but it is on his parents they were given fair warning. i have had lots of upset parents but i am doing what is best for their kids. i even found some 5th graders who were missing basic shots and no one had ever held them accountable in the past. i still stay late a bunch but after the kids are gone is the only time i can get anything done! i have been getting out earlier and earlier each week though!! good luck to anyone else out there struggling with immunizations!!

I will respond to the last two posts. It is my second year as a school nurse and almost my 3rd year being a nurse. I was in non traditional education as my first career and nursing is my second career. Last year I worked for an agency as a sub nurse then got my own school in November. My district had over 30 nurses and a great supervisor. I could call the supervisor whenever I needed any help or had questions. They had about 30 forms already generated in a data base. If I needed something I sent out an email and it came interschool mail the next day. I don't know what my budget was but I was never denied any reasonable request. This year I am on my own. I am working for a charter school. There are 5 charter schools from our company in the city but three of us are in the same "district" and I am the only grade school. The other two schools are grade schools but one does not have a nurse. This school never had a nurse so other than "your child was in my office". I had to create every from from memory. The nurses have been helpful in phone calls and emails but I have been getting a lot of contradicting information. I have to keep calling the state to get some help understanding the laws. There are no standing orders and no overseeing physician. I think some of us are going to get together over christmass break to discuss issues. Fot the issue of the kids sticking around I learned that the hard way as a sub. I have worked as a summer camp nurse and there the kids stay a couple of hours. I now have a fast turn around of the kids unless they have to wait for pee to dry! As for the pants I have not been spending my own money. My husband and I have a company in Costa Rica that does eco tourism tours and comunity service. One project we do is bring clothes to newborn babies, pregnant women and an orphanage. All spring and fall I go to yard sales looking for donations and working with orginizations to get donations. The orphanage has kids up to 7 years old so all the clothing bigger than that I take to the school. Also if people bring clothes to the school (happened 3 times) if they have PJ's, sleeveless shirts or stuff too small I put that in with the donations for Costa Rica. Today i brought in the last of it until it is warm enough again for yard sales. It will be interesting because todays load of pants are pokadot, plad, rainbow striped, and peach shorts! I already had a local church give a ton of clothes they just burned through it so fast. Yesterday a kid repeadly kicked a radiator in anger and flooded a clasroom. There was an hour with no plumbing so 6 kids peed themself. That made 11 changes and cleaned me out! On 5th grader just learned he has mega colon and poops himself one to two times a day and dosen't remember to bring in his own change every day! I agree with the last paragraph of the last post. My goal with the clothing donation in Costa Rica is to give clothes to kids who need it an that is the population at my school. I want them to be able to keep the stuff but I am running low on avenues to replace it at the school. I called a local "community closet" that provided clothes to my last school district but they did not call me back. One teacher picks stuff up for me at thrift store but I don't want her to spend money on this. As far as my budget I get about $40 a month. I just got a CPR mask and paper for the beds. There are no blood pressure cuffs, no pulse ox, no flashlights or stethascope. I have brought in a lot of my own tools to be able to function. I was making ice packs in shopping bags untill the accountant and I bought bags with our own money (this is after I ran out of pags my dad gave me). The first order of supplies the accountant decided what from my list to buy first and completly mis-prioritized! I am having to cut down legal sized folders to letter sized folders because for 2 months I did not have folders for the kindergardern files. I am hanging in and ordered all the free stuff I could find online to decorate my room. I feel like I am venting. I love my job and there is no place I would rather be working. I guess I need money and a filing assistant!!! Take care Fireball P.S. I work in Missouri

One day I was out of pants and I had 6 kids in my office for a combined 9 hours. That is a lot lost instruction time not to mention crowding up my office! I have to wait for parents but many have no transportation or I have them wait an hour and hope they dry out. I have continually been bringing in clothes and today I am almost out again. If I go to a thrift shop that is $4 a pair of pants. I have almost used up all of my places where I can get donations. The kids get a note home to return the schools pants but I think many kids are too poor to buy clothes so they keep them and use them. The note also asks for donations but so far only one family has donated. I may try to get a grant from wallmart/sams or go on donors choose.com. My ethical delema is do I get colored sweatpants that the famillys will return because they are ugly. But this would single out and embarrass the children. Or do I get things that will blend in but never be returned. Most of the accidents are not the teachers fault (they call me and tell me if it is their fault). These kids pee in their seats before raising their hands. They pee in the hall because there is a line. 3 have peed in my office 6 inches from an open bathroom. It is an epidemic. It is usually not the same kids I see new ones all of the time. I get 2 most fire drills! There have been three that I believe did it to get better clothes! Any advice? Fireball

25 inhalers, 6 daily meds, 2 epi pins, 1 diabetic, 3 to 11 kids who wet themselves daily, 1 who soils himself daily, 2 to 6 kids a day who are injured in some type of fight and about 2 to 4 who throw up a day. I have about 4 frequent flyers who do not have significant reasons to see me. The rest are your average visits. Ring worm is about 1 a week. I am on my 3rd wave of lice. 8 letters home to go. I will be holding about 11 kids out of school tomorow and the parents are going to be ******! Then each week it will be another 15 to 25 kids if they don't get their act together! I am not staying late to check dates of kids who are not missing shots. I will just work on that all year. Thank you all so much for your support, this can be a lonly job! Fireball

Thank you all for your advice. I stayed after work on tuesday and got a bunch of letters done. I have 14 children left who are missing shots to go through as well as their siblings. After those 14 every child missing a shot has a deadline to have them or the bus will not pick them up in the morning on that date. I will then start in on the kids not mising shots but need the dates checked. I am going to refuse to come in to do that part on my time off. My last school district didn't even check the dates!! I think on my last count I had 78 kids missing a shot!! I really hope I am at this school next year because I don't want to go through this at someonelses school next year!! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thank you for replying. I am still trying to sort out the doctor letter stating "up to date". I had a student missing 4 shots and no listing for the 1st hep b shot. The doctor gave him the 4 shots I thought he needed. He did not give another hep b shot. He wrote a letter stating that the student is up to date. The parents have contacted the hospital where their son was born and they are not able to get a record of the shot. So if the doctor won't give a shot and the parent can't get a record what do I do? (I even think the mom is a nurse!) I have had so many complications with this entire process!!!!! Thanks for your help, Fireball

I started the school year late and came into a mess with the immunizations at my school. The school had a health aid last year. I arrived with about 50 kids with flags on their files marking missing imunizations. I got a 2 week extension from the state to turn in my list of missing immunizations. I stayed after for an hour almost every day working on orginizing my files and sorting out the immunizations. I got an account to the state database and found about 35 missing immunizations reports and brought those kids to compliant status. For every child missing a shot I am checking the date the shots were given. I now have turned in a list to the state of missing immunizations, sent letters home to about 60 families and checked the siblings of those 60 kids. I have also charted all of the prior screenings and put medical alerts into a new computer system. I now have about 28 more kids missing shots to send letters home, and check their siblings files. When all of that is done i need to check the dates of all of the other kids in the school (school has 435 students). After I sent home the first 30 or so letters the secretary told me she just remembered that when there was no nurse the medical info was put in the school records files. those files are stored away from my clinic and I can only look through about 4 before a student needs me at the clinic. So I have no idea how much information I am missing. I asked 2 office staff members for help and they have not helped me yet and even lost the list of students that I gave to them. I am also seeing about 60 kids a day and had to create every form and system in the office. I also had to learn all of the state laws because I do not have a nursing supervisor this year. I am also aranging blitz screenings and trying to bring in an eye doctor for exams. I am setting ups a staff CPR class etc... THEN yesterday my intrum principal told me that if I don't have the immunizations done by winter break I will have to come in on my days off to finish!!!!!!!!!!!! Any advice?? I am thinking about calling finished when I have all of the letters home for mising shots. I don't plan to have all the dates of other kids done until the end of the year. My last school district considered the correct number of shots complint and did not look at the dates they were given. What do you do at your schools? Also if a child does not have a record of the birth hep-B shot but there is a doctors letter stating that their shots are current does that count at your school? Thank you, Fireball