We are going to try to restructure our school nurse program next year so I need some advice. Right now there are 2 nurses divided between 3 campuses and the county is roughly 3500+ students. I have a base school and she has a base school which are the two bigger schools in the county. Years prior we had 1 school nurse that was based out of the district office and she traveled to each school on a need basis (insulin, catheters, trach care, ect.). That seemed to work great honestly. The school nurse was there to monitor and manage the care plans, IHP meetings, trainings and do some skills but it made the teachers more involved in the little things like bandaids and medication admin. I think we should go back to that kind of setup. We know they will more than likely not hire another nurse to be at the smaller school and no we do not have assistants or LPNs or anything like that and wont be getting that. The way it stands right now they expect the two of us to be responsible for every and any medical need that happens plus do all the other things we are responsible for. I am driving 25 min to a school every other day for the last hour of the day just so admin can say Im there and put on bandaids and give ice packs. I can only go at that time because of other needs at my base school. They save any and every medical thing for me and at 2:00 Im dealing with things that should have been addressed at 8AM. That is getting frustrating. This is our smallest school with 300 students. How does your school nurse structure work if you are the only nurse or have a lot of students and campuses to see?
I just think if the schools couldnt say they had a "full time nurse on campus" that would cut down on some of the drama. Truthfully we are not full time on one campus because we have to travel to the smaller school daily. And yes I believe every student deserves a school nurse but with our lack of funding that is not going to happen.
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We are going to try to restructure our school nurse program next year so I need some advice. Right now there are 2 nurses divided between 3 campuses and the county is roughly 3500+ students. I have a base school and she has a base school which are the two bigger schools in the county. Years prior we had 1 school nurse that was based out of the district office and she traveled to each school on a need basis (insulin, catheters, trach care, ect.). That seemed to work great honestly. The school nurse was there to monitor and manage the care plans, IHP meetings, trainings and do some skills but it made the teachers more involved in the little things like bandaids and medication admin. I think we should go back to that kind of setup. We know they will more than likely not hire another nurse to be at the smaller school and no we do not have assistants or LPNs or anything like that and wont be getting that. The way it stands right now they expect the two of us to be responsible for every and any medical need that happens plus do all the other things we are responsible for. I am driving 25 min to a school every other day for the last hour of the day just so admin can say Im there and put on bandaids and give ice packs. I can only go at that time because of other needs at my base school. They save any and every medical thing for me and at 2:00 Im dealing with things that should have been addressed at 8AM. That is getting frustrating. This is our smallest school with 300 students. How does your school nurse structure work if you are the only nurse or have a lot of students and campuses to see?
I just think if the schools couldnt say they had a "full time nurse on campus" that would cut down on some of the drama. Truthfully we are not full time on one campus because we have to travel to the smaller school daily. And yes I believe every student deserves a school nurse but with our lack of funding that is not going to happen.