role of school nurse

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Thinking of working as a school nurse. any suggestions, what does the job require. I work in med-surg and need a change.

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I needed a change about 3 years ago, I worked in hem/onc/med surg for most of my career. School nursing was such a different world. It was more like community nursing. It was a change not having providers right there or a stocked med room. It was a great deal of working with the other proffessionals in the school. Educating teachers, parents. IMy school was in a high poverty , high crime area many of the children came from single parent homes with very young mothers. Many difficulties trying to coontact the parent and facilitate needed md f/u, medication refills for school-things like that. triage daily in the health office, during the year worked on the required mandates vision, hearing, scoliosis. The most sig change for me was getting used to being the only health care prof in the building, the other prof (teachers, administraters,etc) had their kown ideas about what should be done (re medical and health) and would want me to go and do what they suggested (sometimes unsafe). so i had to really set limits and explain safe practices. Also a lot of things get delegated to the school nurse that really aren't the nurses responsibility. It was a very good and rwarding experience for me. I absolutely loved the students and parents/families. Unfortunately my school was not well run by administration so I returned to hem/onc. Good luck.

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Specializes in school nursing.

The role of a school nurse??? It is the only specialty where you can perform CPR one moment and then be combing gum out of the hair the next without skipping a beat! We are the McGyver's of nursing. You can figure out how to do just about anything with a safety pin, tongue blade, band-aid and maxi-pad!!

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Specializes in Rehab, LTC, school nursing.
The role of a school nurse??? It is the only specialty where you can perform CPR one moment and then be combing gum out of the hair the next without skipping a beat! We are the McGyver's of nursing. You can figure out how to do just about anything with a safety pin, tongue blade, band-aid and maxi-pad!!

This is so true esp when you are dealing with pre-school age kids!! :yeah:

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