School camping trips

[momsnurse1]

Anyone else go as the nurse on school camping trips overnight? I have a few questions on how you do things. I'm pretty new to this in a school setting. Here have been a few issues I've run into. I generally stay in a cabin by myself and use it as a homebase for meds, first aid, ect. Teachers usually stay with the students in their cabins and act as chaperones for a group. What do you do when they send a "sick" (usually homesick) kid to you to lay down/rest and you are the only adult there? This posed 2 issues for me, 1) being left alone with a kid while they are in a bed, 2) what happens if I have to be called to go out into the camp for an emergency? I can't leave the "resting" kid alone in the cabin. My second question is how do you get paid? Is it just 8 hrs a day even though you are responsible 24 hrs a day or do you get paid for the whole 24 per day that you are there? My SD has no actual policies for the nurses that go on these trips and I'm trying to develop one since I like going on them and would like to continue to do so but in a way that is safe for both me and the students. Any insight to these questions is greatly appreciated as well as any other tips you may have. Thank you!

[kidzcare]

I have never done this and I would want to sit down with administration to work out these scenarios well before the trip. Every stomach ache does NOT require a nurse's attention. You would want to discuss what would be handled by the chaperones in the room and have very clear guidelines of what necessitates a nurse visit.

As far as pay, if you are "on call" for the entire trip- make sure your pay reflects that.