School Nurse Staffing Agency

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Hi everyone! I just wanted to hear some thoughts on a staffing agency directed towards only school staffing. I used to manage a staffing office for a large corporation and one of the many modalities that we staffed were schools. There seemed to be a need for temporary relief for District Nurses, full-time needs for students with various disabilities (Trachs, G-Tubes, Diastat Orders, Paralysis, etc...) as well as LVN's who would monitor several students that needed glucose monitoring/insulin injections.

The main problem we ran into was the fact that we could not focus all of our efforts in the area of school staffing because we had too many things on our plate (ie...Acute Care facilities/per diem staffing). I want to open a small agency that just handles school nursing (RNs, LVNs, instructional aids...) in a local California market.

What is everyone's thoughts/suggestions? What other companies already do this? I would really appreciate your feedback. Thanks in advance!

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Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.

Wow :), I guess in a huge market like a California school district, there might be a huge enough demand for school nurses that an agency would be needed. I just have such a hard time fathoming a situation in which school nurses would be in enough demand that an agency would be necessary. I mean, I live in Kentucky; here school nurses are hired by the local health departments, and they really don't have much trouble filling full time jobs.

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Specializes in School Nursing.

Well, I am in Texas but I know when I call in sick, I rarely get a sub. And we have a group of subs that work for the district! There is just not enough of them to go around. I have to be on my death bed to call out because I worry about "my" kiddos being taken care of. And taking a personal day...:rolleyes: yeah, that doesn't happen!

Sounds like a good idea, might run it by the districts in your area and see what they think. Also think about what qualifications you would require your nurses to have. Ideally you could match the nurse to the school (ie send an experienced school nurse to a job with medically fragile kids, lots of meds or procedures, etc.)

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Specializes in School Nursing.

Here is an article you might be interested in regarding a district trying to switch from staff nurses to agency. Seems they are getting a lot of flack for it.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/burlington/news/education/x1176008051/School-nurses-out

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