Some say that life is like a box of chocolates. Well, so is nursing. And, the school nurse piece in the box of nursing chocolates is my favorite. I’ve tried the others too… clinic nursing, floor nursing, public health, assisted living… but there’s just something about school nursing that fits. So, although I’ve been a RN for about 13 years, it is just in the last several that I have honed my skills to a more focused practice in school nursing.
Challenges in school nursing
are many. ‘Autonomous’ becomes your
middle name and you learn to do the very best that you can - often with limited
or sub-par resources. I’m a master at
phone tag and email has become almost as essential as breathing. I have to make sure the right signature is
here and there and that I have talked with all the right staff members and not
the wrong ones. And somewhere amidst all
the organizing, training and i dotting, I need to be hands on with the
students. The times that I’ve wished I
could network with other school nurses usually passed in a glance and I just
plugged forward missing all the valuable and priceless information that my
cohort of school nurses could have offered me.
But thanks to the insight,
ingenuity and dedication of the staff at UW along came eSchoolCare and all of
the sudden I am able to feel confident that I am using the same information
that other school nurses are accessing. It
has created a concise and comprehensive platform for school nurses to log on
and be unified. The information provided
in the various modules is thorough and current.
My favorite feature of the eSchoolCare program is the community forum
that has made it possible for school nurses to network and feel connected in a
setting that otherwise often leaves you feeling isolated in our
profession. The experiences and
knowledge that our fellow school nurses share is so valuable and eSchoolCare
has provided the very tool that we needed to be able to tap into that resource.
For those of you who have
found that the school nursing chocolate is your “go to” pick in the box of
nursing chocolates, eSchoolCare is likely to become an invaluable tool in your
practice. I am very excited about the
potential of eSchoolCare and what it provides to school nurses on an individual
level as well as it’s ability to network us in real time and make us feel like
we definitely have and earned our spot in the box of nursing flavors.
Stay well –
L. Marty, RN
Middleton High School
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