How have school nurses adjusted to the COVID-19 pandemic?

Nurses have always been said to be resourceful and innovative. This rings true even more so today since COVID-19 came onto the scene. The pandemic hit everyone unexpectedly and reminded us of an unwelcome guest that we couldn’t wait to get rid of.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 didn’t leave quickly and is still rearing its ugly head to this day. Nurses have had to adapt and adapt fast. A pandemic plan for school is implemented and nurses have had to make quite a few changes. 

A typical day in the life of a school nurse involves interacting with students, first aid, case management, counseling and health education. They sometimes serve as the only medical resource in the building. This in itself is a lot because everyone is looking to you to know everything concerning anything medically.

With COVID on the scene some nurses are back in the schools, and some are working virtually. For those who are in the schools, they have to wear full PPE which consists of K-95, gowns and gloves. When school nurses first went back the full PPE was worn daily but now since time has progressed some only wear the masks and the other items when clinically necessary.

Students are only back in a limited capacity which means less visits to the medical room. This is good because it is easier to prevent crowds in the medical room and better infection control can be maintained. When a student does visit the medical room, the nurse must triage and figure out what is wrong.

When assessing a student with any respiratory symptoms the nurse has to now differentiate between allergies, cold, influenza or COVID. If anyone in the building is suspected of having COVID, they are sent to what we call the situation room. The nurse is then called to the situation room to complete an assessment and give the student the necessary documents to be seen by a medical provider to rule out COVID.

For those school nurses who had to work from home, they have to manage and maintain the student's health and immunization records. Some school nurse even set up Zoom meetings to provide health education and support for students and their parents. From time to time, they joined in on teachers' virtual classrooms to make themselves available to those in need as well.

The pandemic has also affected the way school nursing supervisors work. When the school nurses first returned to the school medical rooms, supervisors were not allowed to visit as they usually do in an effort to reduce traffic. Visits from supervisors provide quality assurance and on-site help that can be given to the school nurses.

Supervisors were now forced to manage nurses with video conferencing calls, emails, and phone calls. While the supervisors were glad to have some sort of means to help it still doesn’t beat actually being on site to provide support. Now that the numbers are gradually going down, school nursing supervisors are able to get back into the field to better assist the school nurses.

Through it all school nurses have been resilient and have worked together to help those who matter the most, the students. Nurses already have an innate ability to be resilient and innovative and this pandemic surely proved just that!