Freddi Adelson, Former District Health Services Coordinator and School Nurse, describes her experience moving from a hospital practice to a school nurse practice.

There are two things that I remember clearly from my early (and not so early) years as a school nurse.

First, I had to find a great deal of information about every school health topic imaginable in so many different places. There were so many questions specific to school nurse practice that I had to answer because it was so very different from the Pediatric ICU setting where I had previously worked. There was information about chronic illness and how it impacted learning and typical medications used in the school setting. These medications were very different from the typical meds used in the Pediatric ICU setting.

Some other questions about school nurse practice that I had to answer by searching through several sources included:  

What was special education exactly and how was that different from 504?

What was the difference between a health plan and an emergency plan?

What did the nurse practice act say about school nursing (not much specifically)?

How was I going to find people to give students their inhalers or epi-pens on field trips? …and I could go on.

I was challenged because I couldn’t store all the information in my head (and some of it changed over time).

Second, I recall how team members looked to me as the “expert” on all things “medical.”  This happened often at student intervention team meetings when the team was reviewing a particular student. The questions often had to do with medications or diagnoses or expected outcomes of treatment. Although I was an experienced nurse, as the only healthcare practitioner in the school, I could have used some additional support and resources.

eSchoolCare is the place I wish I could have gone to back then. The information is all there in one spot at the touch of a finger. There are links to the original sources. There is expert content from practicing nurses who know school nursing. There is practical advice. I can picture myself back then in a team meeting whipping out my tablet (electronic, that is) and clicking quickly to the right section of eSchoolCare to respond to colleagues’ questions or comments. Now, eSchoolCare would be my “go to” reference. 

Professor Lori Anderson Interview: eSchoolCare Helps School Nurses in Three Different Ways

Laura Marty, High School RN Discusses how eSchoolCare’s Community Forum helps her to Stay Connected

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

Professor Lori Anderson Interview: eSchoolCare grew out of research. It was created by experts in school health, who continually improve and update it.

Pam Schaal, School District RN, discusses how eSchoolCare's Asthma Module helps her students

Our first guest blog comes from Pam Schaal, School District RN from the Mount Horeb Area School District in Wisconsin.

 What do you say when someone asks you “what is a typical day for a school nurse?” I often chuckle and reply ”there is no typical day”. I have to be honest, that is one of things I like about my job. I enjoy the variety of the student needs and the challenge of making health care work in the community setting.

While we all know this can be challenging, it also gives us an opportunity to impact children’s health in a very real way. It is not uncommon for us to start a day with a student and a parent standing at the office door with new orders and meds. As the only dedicated healthcare providers in schools, we are responsible for making sure that new orders are followed so that children with chronic health conditions can succeed in school.

 eSchoolCare focuses on five chronic health conditions commonly managed in schools. One of the five chronic conditions is asthma. In years past I have struggled to find training materials, teaching tools and resources appropriate for school staff and students. I’ve spent hours trying to find or create templates for IHPs and Asthma Action Plans and never really felt confident that the information is unbiased and legally sound. The other challenge has been to find a way to present the information effectively to parents, students and non-medical school staff. eSchoolCare is the resource that we have needed.

I have been using the eSchoolCare asthma training videos with the school staff for more than a year. The staff have shared that they like the videos because they are brief and they feature real nurses interacting with real children. The videos model different interactions with different aged children. All of this really helps the staff feel more confident in supporting their students. I see a huge difference in the attention they give to our asthmatic students and that translates into better outcomes.

I’ve also used the eSchoolCare videos as a teaching tool with students and I am amazed at the impact it has had on improved self-management of asthma. I have a first grader who we trained with eSchoolCare, who also was able to teach her mom the right way for her to take her inhaler. I had a fourth grader bring to school a new inhaler she was given in the emergency department the night before and no one had shown her how to use it. Using eSchoolCare, we were able to teach her how to properly use the inhaler when it is required. I also had a second grader reduce her inhaler usage from twice daily to once or twice a week after we worked with her!

What started out 100 years ago as a public health idea to improve attendance and reduce the spread of germs in the New York public schools has become a nursing specialty that is an integral part of our schools and health care systems nationwide. It’s not very often that something comes along just for us. But maybe this is a good sign of things to come.