School/residential RN-newbie needs help

[Jomhogan]

Hi all,

i just accepted a position as a school/residential RN at a private school specializing in children with autism. I'm primarily from a psych background and new to the world of school nursing. My main question revolves around how on call nursing works at your facility. Mine is one week out of the month. Is this normal? Also what expectations are made of you while on call? Thanks!

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

I've never worked in this type of facility but I do have a patient in my current job who is in one now and I know that the nursing director is usually on-call overnight and the residential staff may call her, for example, if this child has symptoms of hyper or hypoglycemia overnight (he's a type 1 diabetic) and then she triages the issue over the phone to decide if she needs to go in, if he needs to go the ER, if they need to page the on-call Endo or if the issue can wait until the nurse gets in at 7am.

When I worked in a boarding school, the full-time nurse very rarely got calls overnight but I know one time when she did it was because the on duty administrator mixed up 2 of the kids' meds.

[LikeTheDeadSea, MSN, RN]

Swing over to the "School Nurse" specialty forum :)

We will welcome you there and likely someone who doesn't check the Pediatrics forum might have a better answer to your question.