Teachers and Staff Want To Be Taken Care Of

[Tocino]

I'm a new agency school nurse in a public HS in NYC. Lately, the teachers and staff are making me nuts, they want me to give them medication (which is not allowed even for students unless they have medication administration form), check their VS and even go down to their class to give first aid. There's even one incident that a teacher want me to change his wound dressing, which I said that he should go to any urgent care or go back to his doctor for that wound. I talked to my nursing supervisor about this and said that I can only call them EMS if they have abnormal vs or any injury which what I've been doing (most of the time they decline). She also said that I should never mentioned that school nurses are not for the staff or teachers but for the students only, but isn't much better to be transparent about it? Like I'm only here for the students, if you're not feeling well go home or go to the hospital, I don't get the "but don't tell them that". 

How do I handle this? Should I just be transparent? How can I say to admin, teachers and staff that I'm not here for them? 

[beachynurse, ASN, BSN]

DallasRN said:

Maybe suggest she go see her psychiatrist?  I'm definitely not a school nurse - never even worked pedi - but using my best judgment I somehow don't think school nurses are qualified to handle brain tumors.  ?

I tried to go in that direction once and OMG, you would have thought I asked her to check into a mental institution. She doesn't believe in therapy, but she sure believes in going to other MD's. for just about anything. It looks like the brain tumor idea is starting to wear off.... She told me that the neurologist and neurosurgeon's that she has seen just don't seem to "get how ill she is" and can't seem to find a tumor. Imagine that?? When I see her come into the clinic, I try really hard to hide, or be too busy to talk to her. I just don't have time to spend over an hour talking to her about her symptoms, and her self diagnoses. It gets so bad sometimes, that I have had to talk to her administrator. 

DallasRN said:

Another thought - and again, I've NEVER had a school nurse experience (and I'm only reading this thread because I'm retired from nursing and too lazy to do my chores)...anyway...

For teachers that want the frequent b/p checks what about approaching it from the angle of "you (teacher) buy a b/p cuff (Amazon has some good but cheaper models) and bring it to the office for a lesson on how to use, keeping logs, etc.".  Teach them to take log to their doctor, use AHA guides...that sort of thing.  Perhaps even set up a couple of hours each semester for "teacher education" - with admin approval, of course.  Just a thought.

I actually LOVE this idea!