pernella

I always get "I LOVED my school nurse when I was a kid!"

If they don't self carry we keep personal EpiPens in the office in a filing cabinet like all the other meds. We also have stock EpiPen Jr's and adult EpiPens in the office (middle school). Both the care plans and the med cards have a post it listing which classroom the student is at each period. One of the high school nurses has a small emergency bag and one of the stock doses is kept in there at all times so she can grab and go. In an emergency campus supervisors will roll up to the office in a golf cart and drive me where I need to go instead of me attempting to run there.

I had a kid come to me with pain from a regular run of the mill ingrown toenail. There was nothing I could do. I don't have anything to set up a foot soak, I technically can't do nail care outside of cleaning nails, not enough nail to do the wet cotton trick. So I just explained how to properly trim toenails and sent him back to class.

I love when my kids come to me, hold up their baggie and say "I came to take this". Pretty sure you just blew it for your mom kid. This has happened with everything from antibiotics to Tylenol to Benadryl.

June 2nd. Last week of school is a four day week thanks to Memorial Day

I've spent most of my time between middle and elementary school since credentialed nurses generally staff the high schools here (I'm not credentialed yet). My boss tells me high school is fun but you have to do your time in the lower grades. Hands down the middle school kids are my favorite. Dramatic? Yes but you can be firm. They are deep in the awkward stage and life is hard for them. Nothing like the million non-injuries that I see at the elementary school. The little ones are just frustrating for me. I have been given some days at a continuation high school recently and I like it. It's probably a little more dramatic than a regular high school but the kids are great. Occasionally I'll see a baby since the school offers day care for students to complete their education and I'll get called to check out a random rash.

1. What made you take an interest in school nursing? My kids and the stress of ICU. I LOVED critical care when I started but after a while I felt like I was doing more harm than good especially patients who could not be "fixed" but family insisted we keep trying. At one point I was cleaning up an intubated/sedated patient who had awful breakdown from so many loose BM's. Every time I wiped their skin it would start bleeding and they would physically pull away from me. I just started crying at the bedside. Nursing burnout is real. And let's be real: Not having to coordinate crazy day care schedules over breaks and three day weekends is amazing. So is making it to school/sport/dance events. Also, I no longer battle nurses at the end of the year for Thanksgiving/Xmas Eve/Xmas/New Year Day off. 2. Was it difficult to find a job in school nursing? Not really. It's difficult to find a good paying school nursing job around here because they are coveted and require a credential. I have the luxury of not needing to work so taking a low paying, part-time, non-credentialed position that popped up (just to see if I liked it) was doable for me. Now I have my foot in the door, I'm working on the credential and my boss knows I'm waiting for someone to retire. 3. What is the most rewarding and most difficult part of your job? The most rewarding is the ability to go out and do my job, be a nurse, yet I still have the time and energy to do everything else. I make kids feel better, I build relationships with a lot of them, I help a lot out AND I still have balance with the rest of my life. The most difficult is frustrating parents who don't want to pick up legitimately sick kids or are just plain unavailable for anything.

Fidget spinner update: My mother in law took my son to buy a fidget spinner with his own money. Next day took it to school with strict instructions to follow his teachers rules. Lost it by the end of the day. He says he can get it back if I write his teacher a note asking for it but I told him that his teacher's desk is perfectly safe place for it to be for the next five weeks....lesson learned kid

I'm legit horrified by this. I have....none! Thank you California. I have a few 8th graders who dodged a second varicella but that's about it. Even my transfers from Mexico who don't bring their immunization records with them are required to have proof that they've started all their immunization before being allowed to begin their first day.

I actually have the time, energy and head space to train for triathalons now so I guess it depends on the person. When I did 12's all I wanted to do on my days off was not wear pants and rest after spending three days on my feet turning patients and chasing honking vents.

Where are you located? One of my fellow students in my online class was in New Jersey and did her capstone on implementing emergency Narcan in their schools. New Jersey is one of the states that is now doing this. It was pretty rad.

I do have days where I want to give up, they don't happen too often. I stick up for myself and my profession politely without getting into trouble (so far). There is no perfect job for 99% percent of the population. We take the good with the bad and compare them to our other options. Is this job better than something else you could do? Would you REALLY be happier somewhere else? For me, I like to look at the positives: 1. My boss has verbalized that unless I'm completely negligent she will back me when it comes to teacher or parent complaints. She demonstrated this well earlier this year when a parent demanded a nurse be fired, she quietly moved the nurse to another site for the remainder of the year and offered to return her next year since the student would be promoting to another school. At the hospital we were thrown under the bus constantly. 2. I get up at a decent time. I get home at a decent time. I don't worry about summer/winter/spring break childcare. My kids LOVE that I'm around and not a walking zombie. 3. I'm not wanting to throat punch a co-worker over the holiday schedule every year. 4. I thrive on routine. Rotating 12's were torture. 5. I know this is silly but it's the truth: All the nurses that I work with who've been doing this for 20+ years look AMAZING. There is stress but not at the level of the hospital and it reflects mentally and physically. 20+ years of hospital stress takes a toll on a person.

I've seen them here at middle school and in elementary. I swear my kids school jumps on every fad first bottle flipping, then kendama's, then pokemon cards and now fidget spinners. I told him I'm not paying for these fads and he can buy it with his own money.

I like being "the nurse" acknowledges my place. When I'm needed they call out for "the nurse" on walkie talkie and honestly my ears perk up when I hear it since I tend to block out all the other talk going on the walkie talkies. I'm the only one on campus so it's not like you can get me confused with anyone. Heck half my patients (when I worked in the hospital) called me "nurse" or "hey!". It's not like this is something new to me. Staff generally call me Pernella and I ask kids to call me Nurse Pernella.

I work on a step down unit that is notoriously disorganized. We've been through multiple managers (probably a large part of the problem) and our new manager, who's new to managing, is asking the senior nurses on the floor for help getting us all on one page. Administration has been implementing/changing policies frequently, it's hard to keep everyone up to date on what's new and make sure they remember to follow through. Example: We have a new policy where if we get a transfer order but no bed is available the status changes automatically after two hours. That means we have to note all transfer orders even if they haven't left the floor. I'm totally guilty of forgetting this myself. When the patient finally gets to med/surg we get complaints that the transfer orders were never noted. We've done weekly updates, checklists, posted signs in break room and at the station,meetings, ect but for every new task we're asked to do, we forget something. Other floors are keeping up, in fact they're the reason we're realizing how bad the problem is. Every time we forget they complain to their manager who then complains to our manager. I can't figure out what they're doing differently and I've asked nurses who work on floors who very consistent as far as keeping up with changes. I need help helping my floor.