Small Private School looking to initiate school nursing

MelissaJaneRN · Sep 11, 2008

You can try calling your state school nurse association or the national association of school nursing. A good book you can get from the national association of school nursing is "Scopes and Standards of Practice: School Nursing" and the new textbook for school nursing by Janice Selekman is a must have for any nurses office.

I think being employed as a school nurse, you couldnt do anything that your EMT license would permit that your nurse doesnt. Theyd have to hire you as school nurse/emt. Whatever your job description says, go from there. If you dont have a job description, make one to fit what you want and OK it with administration! If it is a private school, they probably dont have to follow public school state laws (at least thats how it is in DE) so you can do whatever they want you to do. In DE, we only have 1 standing MD order for our nurses office that is school-wide and thats the use of epi in suspected anaphalyxsis. The only other MD orders we follow are for individual kids who have provided them to us.

Also, you could try speaking to public school nurses in your area. See if you can observe one for a day or two. See how they do things. Asking a school nurse in your area will provide you with the best insight available. Or speak to a private school nurse and see how she does things.

600 students is a lot. We have 560 and I am busy all day long with just nurse visits.. Id love to do a lot more teaching every now and then as a "special guest star" in the classroom, but there is just no time. We also have mandated vision and hearing screenings, scoliosis for older kids.. Trying to obtain medical documents from parents who wont provide them.. Its a very busy job.

Working in just the mornings and only 3 times a week at that, I can imagine youd only be able to do paperwork type things such as care plans, 504/IEPs, referral management, and a zillion other paperwork type things we have to fit into our day on top of scheduled medication and treatment times, and daily nurse visits.

If you were to be expected to also teach in the school, then they cant expect you to switch hats to a school nurse when you are needed for first aid elsewhere. I think this is what you were saying?

Can you be a school nurse strictly 3-4 days a week and a teacher the rest? I imagine you want to teach health related topics? Will you follow a set cirriculum or do you have to make your own lesson plans? This is a lot to take on.

Good luck! :clown:

joy09 · Sep 14, 2008

Get in touch with the National and State School Nurse Associations for guidelines and suggestions. In Pa, the department of health has a school nurse consultant and an orientation manual. First aid is half of the picture. The rest of it is meeting regulation standards for documentation on the health record, immunization record, assuring that all screenings are done as well as any physicals and dentals required. We also do physical and dentals when parents want them rather than getting a private physical. Talk to the nurses in your school district and the person in charge of that district. In Pa, the public school district is responsible for providing any nurse services that the private school principle requests. For us, it is all of the above with the exception of daily first aid. Our nurses float to those schools once a week to meet that expectation. I am sure the school district would be thrilled to help you if this is the case with them. They should have their own policy and procedure manual as well and you can read this to get a more comprehensive look at forms, important areas of practice etc. for the school. You certainly don't have to reinvent the wheel. Message me if you want to talk about this. I love to initiate and organize!

PvtSchlNurse · Sep 21, 2008

Kris,

I work at a Private School (for the past 10 years) in the Atlanta area and would be glad to talk to you and get you pointed in the right direction.

My email address is [email protected].