Any good/helpful books?

[lpnbutterfly]

Hi! I just got my first nursing job and it's as a school nurse. I've finished my first week of orientation working with another nurse at a different school. I will be at an elementary school for the rest of the school year (3 weeks). So far I am absolutely in love with the job!!! After these three weeks, I will have the summer off and was wondering if there are any school nursing guides or any books that I could read over the summer that might help? We have a lot of children with asthma and ADHD and diabetes so I thought I would really try to brush up on those three subjects for sure over the summer. Anything else you could suggest? All ideas are welcome!!

[Nurse ABC]

I think those are all good ideas. I don't know of any specific school nursing books that have helped but reading up about different types of specific things like what you mentioned above as well as rashes, assessing ears and stomachaches and head injuries will be helpful. A lot of it will just come with experience. You have to have excellent assessment skills so you can determine if a kid is faking or really has some symptoms of an illness or injury. Also, if you can plan some different types of wellness programs for the staff like fitness plans, healthy eating plans, blood pressure checks, etc that will help get you more integrated into the school. Plan classes for students like hand washing, healthy snacks, hygiene and puberty, dental health, etc or find community resources for others to come in and be guest speakers are always good ideas.

[intheweeds]

Obviously, you should check to see what your district guidelines are and abide by those, but when I first started in school nursing I found the Illinois school nurse handbook to be a really helpful reference (even though I am not in Illinois):

Loyola Univ. Health System - IL EMSC - Resource Manual for the Nurse in the School Setting

...then click on the .pdf link.

[Sudsy]

I borrowed this from my library my first year:

School Nursing: A Comprehensive Text: Dr Janice Selekman: 9780803614031: Amazon.com: Books

It was very helpful!

Also, the major children's hospital in my state has a conference called "Summer School for School Nurses" that I attended. Very helpful!

Here is the link so you can see if there is anything like it near you:

http://childrenshospital.org/clinicalservices/Site3102/Documents/HABROCHURE2011.pdf

Welcome aboard!