Where has the year gone? How could it be turning cold so soon?!?
I even saw snowflakes in the air this morning.
I was thinking back to the
years and years that I sat at a school nurse’s desk, and yes – I really miss it. I miss being a part of a school with all of the activity and excitement that is
generated in the hundreds of interactions that I would have each day. And it
also fed the part of nursing that I truly love – the connections that we as
school nurses get to make with our students, families and faculty each day. In
acute care settings we would only know a patient for a limited time (and it
seemed the ones we truly loved left the hospital much too soon!), but in the
school setting, we have years to get to know our students and to help them
achieve positive health outcomes.
There is so much to do! We’ll never get bored in school nursing!
As you hit
your stride for the 2013 – 2014 school year and complete some of the required
screening and reporting, I’d like to encourage you to expand the resources that
you typically go to and discover something new. At the beginning of the school
year, NASN staff put together a
Back to School Toolkit - but this is a
collection of resources that will take you through the school year.
"A collection
of resources that will take you through the school year!"
What’s on
your plate? Have you witnessed bullying at your school? There’s a great
tri-fold
brochure that helps define your role in preventing this aggressive behavior. Have your middle school students gotten a
meningitis booster? Look at the
resources in the
Get in the Game campaign that ties sports participation with
a vaccination opportunity. Do you have students at risk for anaphylaxis? Visit NASN’s
Get Trained program for everything that you need to train your school
staff to use an epinephrine autoinjector (from the presentation right down to
the sign in sheet!). We’ve collected these resources and so much more to help
you at your school nursing desk – just take a minute to look at the NASN
Back to
School Toolkit.
So stay warm, stay motivated and stay current in your school nursing practice
– and let NASN provide you with the resources that you need in your Health
Office to do the important work that you do.