Screening hours? Closed office?

[villageRN, BSN, RN]

Does your school/district allow you to hold daily screening hours? If so, is your office closed to non-emergent students during this time?

If you DO have screening hours where your office is closed to non-emergent students, what is your policy for handling the students who still come to the nurse's office?

[ruby_jane, BSN, RN]

What a great idea!! I do not. After the first round of "I need this screening paperwork yesterday" at the beginning of the year I have said "I cannot do this today but I will get it for you this week." Or "This is a student who will be screened by law (grades preK, K, 1,3,5,7) and the screening team will be available X day. Will that work for you?"

[Eleven011]

The only time I come close to doing this, is when I have the county health nurse and her staff come help me with 5th grade screenings because we add scoliosis to that. We all take a station (scoliosis, Ht/Wt, B/P) and then run them through in about an hour or so. On that day, I send out a school wide email stating the the health nurse is here to help me today and during that hour, please limit any non-emergent visits. If stomachaches/headaches do show up, I give them a quick ice pack or cracker and tell them they need to rest in their classroom until I'm done. Unless obvious fever or current vomiting. For all the other grades, I work them in where I can and take visits as they come.

[cowboysandangels, BSN]

That would be amazing to have a closed office for screenings. My screenings take forever because I have to stop in between students so much to care for others. Even if I sent a message out to teachers to NOT send students, they still would.

[kidzcare]

I used to have a sub come in and work in my office while I would spend the entire day doing screenings.

The big problem is that our definition of emergency is vastly different than everyone else in the school.

[OyWithThePoodles, RN]

Every school in our district takes a day to do screens, a different day for each school of course. But we designate one health screen day where grades 1-5 have vision, weight, height, and scoliosis done. Our FRYSC helps out as well as nursing students from the local high school. I hold the spot screener for vision because it's so darn expensive and our district health coordinator is usually here to do the scoliosis. This works out perfectly as we have a sheet that the student carries with them that we write the info on, weight always being last so that they don't see their weight (has been an issue in the past). We copy them all and mail them home and I put the info in the computer.

My office staff takes care of daily meds and problems just like they would if I was absent since we don't have any subs. Diabetic students come to me in the gym. It's perfect.

[jess11RN]

I cover 2 schools.

I am primary based in my middle school. For those screenings, I do not close my office. I have less students overall there and less screenings to perform at that level, so I'll take student visits in between my screenings.

For my elementary school, we get a sub to cover my middle school office, I ask for parent volunteers to be my runners. The elementary school aged kiddos take a little more time and require more screenings, so I find the extra help helps me and the process significantly.

It takes me about a week per school.

[JenTheSchoolRN, BSN, RN]

I have closed my office to non-emergencies for screenings.

It has NEVER worked. I send emails about this, have notes in the daily email to all staff about it and I always, always get sent non-urgent students. And screenings take forever.

The only thing that worked was closing my office during parts of the day, doing screenings in one of our smaller pull-out classrooms and having the main office text me for any actual emergencies (my office managers ROCK).