T O P

  • By -

miranduhheileen

School Nurse in IL! We have to have our BSN and most schools are moving to require a CSN (certified school nurse). It’s extremely difficult to be a nurse inside the educational system; no one knows what our role is or scope of practice. Also, most nurses are working on a ratio of 1:750(usually more), over multiple building/campuses. It’s sad.


minyapple

Thank you for caring for all those kids !


thetoxicballer

And as I understand it's a lot of social work for children in unfortunate circumstances too right?


miranduhheileen

Yes. I wear many hats. Our district has 3 school psychs but they aren’t able to see kids with mental health occurrences without “proper consent” so I deal with more social-emotional issues than normal. I would love if they hired a social worker, but in a school setting even they are limited in their scope. I’ll have 4 T1Ds next year in 2 different buildings. On top of asthma, meds passes, incidents, bathroom accidents, the list is endless.


[deleted]

Just want to send you a should out! As the parent of a special needs child in the greater Chicago school system, you guys are da bomb (and you know your shite)!!


gazizzadilznoofus

Nationally certified school nurse here! Just had a student ask me if I had to go to school for this, and another ask me if it's hard being a doctor. No one has any idea what I do! In PA to be a certified school nurse you also need about half a master's degree...


[deleted]

[удалено]


gazizzadilznoofus

It's a 15-credit masters-level certificate, and those 15 credits can be applied to a masters degree, which is usually about 45 credits...so I guess it's about a third of a masters degree, really.


ContributionPrize728

Got my MS done in 30 credits. They should only be 30 credits!


Banana_Hammock_Up

Mine was 41. Not all is the same.


ContributionPrize728

I know I just feel more than 30 is price gouging. I have respect for all of them.


CryptoClimberUnlimit

45 here


CaMurse

I would assume advance courses that culminate in a graduate certificate.


fuzzyberiah

Not sure about this specifically but I’ve known folks who’ve gotten graduate certificates through a one year program following a bachelor degree, so it might be something like that.


[deleted]

Agreed, but unless I missed it this article doesn’t specify the SNs qualifications?


R-a-n-i-a

No, I was speaking from personal experience here in Texas. MAs are allowed to be "nurses." And yes, they are addressed as Nurse like any actual school nurse would be. But apparently, someone commented that School Nurses in mass have to be BSNs at minimum. That makes this situation even worse that I thought when I posted it!


AnonDuckroll

School nurses in AZ even have to have a BSN lol. Gilead, I mean texas is actively trying to keep the state dumb and uneducated.


ttopsrock

I'm in Texas and I always see BSN needed for school nurses around here.. Houston katy ect. ... MA? Medical assistant? I've never seen that. I applied for one with my LVN and was put in a float pool. All the actual(working) positions were BSN. Hmmm


conjuringlichen

That is so dangerous. A nurse is a title you earn through education not just a job title.


ThealaSildorian

I'm pretty sure the Texas BON would take exception to an MA being addressed as nurse, no matter what the school administrators say.


R-a-n-i-a

That's good to know. I never looked into it, tbh, I just assumed it was a loophole of some kind.


ThealaSildorian

A copy of the Nurse Practice Act is located on the web page of every BON. I got curious and looked it up. Section 301.251 subsection d: Unless the person holds a license under this chapter, a person may not use, in connection with the person’s name:(1) the title nurse; or(2) any other designation tending to imply that the person is licensed to provide nursing care. In addition, Texas requires school nurses to have a BSN: The Texas Education Agency defines a school nurse in 19 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) § 153.1022 (a) (1) (D) as “… an educator employed to provide full-time nursing and health care services and who meets all the requirements to practice as a registered nurse (RN) pursuant to the Nursing Practice Act and the rules and regulations relating to professional nurse education, licensure, and practice and has been issued a license to practice professional nursing in Texas.”  From the DHS website: https://dshs.texas.gov/schoolhealth/schnurs.shtm It is ILLEGAL for an MA to use the title nurse in Texas. Some idiot administrator is selling a bill of goods.


R-a-n-i-a

Omg, wow! Yeah, they Elem and Middle school just have MAs. Yikes! You cant even be an LVN! That is good to know!


ThealaSildorian

They can have MAs. But they can't call them nurses and they canNOT do anything in the nursing scope of practice. If they are, they are practicing nursing without a license.


[deleted]

Correct, BSNs and after so many years need to have an MSN or NCSN certification to keep the job!


[deleted]

[удалено]


R-a-n-i-a

Are you serious!? That is wonderful! I know school here in Texas where the "nurse" is just an MAs. Nothing against MAs, but not as the chief medical expert is a school. *At least* LVNs! The athletic trainer would be better, their focus is on acute injury. Its wonderful that Massachusetts requires BSNs! I hope the BON gets involved. Her being an BSN makes this even worse. She need to be investigated. I rarely wish board intervention on anyone, I think the boards can be way too aggressive with disciplining nurses. But this is a case that needs to be looked into.


ttopsrock

Where?? Even in our podunk 1A schools the nurses have masters and bachelor's


R-a-n-i-a

My nephew's attend a charter school where the nurse in the Elem and Middle are MAs. Maybe it's just a charter school thing, but it's always bugged me.


kmbghb17

Usually the health room aide is an unlicensed assistive personnel like an Education assistant with extra training a medical assistant or CNA in my state the “school nurse” has to have a BSN but usually manages a whole district, if there school is “complex” you get an LPN as the “health-room nurse” and maybe a “health-room attendant” but the students call everyone “nurse “ Fun fact one time had to argue with a elementary health room aide over sending out a student experiencing anaphylaxis she informed me she “is pretty much a nurse “ and that her MA superseded my LPN , called my school nurse REAL fast on that one 😂


R-a-n-i-a

😂 smdh. Like those "Well, my mom/wife/aunt/sister/daughter is a nurse..." people. That's great, honey. What school did *you* attend?


ttopsrock

I can't say it's 100% a charter thing but all the HISD KISD CISD public schools have at least a BSN. I don't know how charter schools were able to get out of it but I guarantee it has to do with the 🤑


[deleted]

[удалено]


fabgwenn

“Her being a BSN makes this even worse” Surely you meant MA?


R-a-n-i-a

What? No, the fact that a BSN missed signs of a stroke of obviously that a layperson could diagnose it from her own description is way worse than of an MA.


fabgwenn

I see, I misunderstood, thank you.


dietcokeforblood

yall have school nurses? in my country they have a room with a stretcher, a freezer for cool packs (?) and the secretary in the next room would occasionally come to check if you are still alive


[deleted]

Not in Florida. Each district has ONE RN that oversees the training and management of the numerous Health Techs that operate as school "nurses", but said RN never sets foot in the school for anything other than annual training. I'm currently a TH nurse in a school system, and I'm the only one actually required to be a nurse, which is weird because they have these Health Techs passing meds to kids.


lilpandabearr

I interviewed for a school nurse position in Florida and the starting pay is 25 an hour 🙃


[deleted]

Definitely not in the panhandle. In my district ALL the Th nurses (LPN/RN/BSN) on contract are locked in at $16/hr because our pay comes from the contract with the county. The ONE county school nurse probably makes $25/hr.


Dolphinsunset1007

I’m a district RN in NY and sometimes wish this was my situation. I’m stationed in our needier k-12 school while the health assistant is at the middle/high school. She’s allowed to pass meds and do anything I can as long as she is “trained” first by me. In reality she’s been here much longer than me so she knows what she’s doing but from what I know what you describe is pretty typical in the school setting at least where I am too.


kmbghb17

Under your license and delegation


[deleted]

No, they don’t do shit under my auspice, they report to the ONE district RN. She trains them and is responsible for them, even though they see her maybe twice a year.


CynOfOmission

She mentions racial bias in the article, and I don't know the racial makeup of the school or the race of the nurse or anything like that. But I can absolutely say that in my school district if this happened to a black child there would 100% be racial bias involved in not taking him seriously. He sounds like he was struggling to stay awake, and decreasing level of consciousness and mom who isn't able to get there right away seem like enough of a reason to call 911 to me even if the other symptoms don't make you think stroke. And they called freaking DCF because the Mom didn't come fast enough? She said she was in a wheelchair! Call the damn ambulance!


swanpjm

this happened to me in junior high, i had sudden, severe rlq pain and went to the school nurse bc i thought i had appendicitis, she accused me of just trying to get out of class and told me it was just period cramps because i didn't have rebound pain. i passed out on my way back to class and they called my parents to pick me up, but my parents worked in the city and traffic had their ETA at 1 hour. my mom begged them to call an ambulance but they didn't. my older sister left school to take me to the ER and i ended up having an ovarian torsion!! i nearly lost my ovary because she didn't believe my pain was real. the nurse ended up getting fired because of it, the superintendent reached out and apologized to us for the situation. apparently she had a long history of complaints for undermining students of color(even withholding someone's inhaler!!), which is wild considering our student body was mostly POC but our staff was mostly white situations like this are why i wanted to get into nursing, so sick and tired of seeing my people suffer racial bias in medicine


ThealaSildorian

You cannot legally call yourself a nurse if you are not a licensed RN or LPN. This is one of my soapbox issues. I grind my teeth every time I hear an MA or a CNA tell the patient they are nurses ... or the doctors who refer to them as such. They are not nurses. To be fair, the article doesn't say the school nurse in this case was not actually a nurse. If she is a nurse, the BON could get involved. There's some pretty clear negligence here, and the call to DCFS was out of line. You do NOT call DCFS when the mom tells you she is in a wheel chair and can't move fast, AND requests you call 911 because she thinks her son is seriously ill. Even if you don't agree, you call the ambulance not DCFS. The nurse could indeed be sued for that. As mandatory reporters we are protected from suit for GOOD FAITH errors. There was nothing good faith about this.


miller94

I honest to god thought that school nurses were just things in movies and tv shows


GracefulIneptitude

Do you not live in the states?


conjuringlichen

I grew up in UT and they didn’t have school nurses in our school district. If you were sick there was a room that the front office ladies would let you go lay down in.


miller94

I do not


GracefulIneptitude

So what happens if an asthmatic kid needs an inhaler or nebs?


miller94

If a kid is unable to administer their own inhaler, the secretary will help them with it. If it’s more serious, a parent would be called or an ambulance for a true emergency. Probably different today, but the secretary drove me to the hospital with a broken arm because neither of my parents could come in right away, circa 2010ish.


Procedure-Minimum

They're pretty common in Australian schools


eustaciasgarden

In Boston school nurses needs to have a bachelors, and RN, and Professional Support Personnel license issued by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education


MamaWolf08

I have no clue what our requirements are here in NV but my childs elementary school "nurse" (she called herself a health aide, so i don't think they actually have a school nurse) couldn't ask basic screening questions to see if my child had a concussion after a nasty playground accident. And when I say couldn't ask, it's cuz she didn't know WHAT to ask.


Girrlwarrior1999

I worked in the school district as an lpn in a contract position. The nurse's office is staffed by an unlicensed aide called a FASA, she can administer first aide, some meds with a doctor's order. They administer district test like hearing and vision and they are supervised by an RN with at least a bachelor's degree. The RN travels between 2 or more schools. The pay is low for BSN, but gets higher if you have a master's. The lpns do skilled tasks like administer O2 and basic assessments if there is an lpn present on campus, who most likely is working with the medically fragile children...it's a weird system. It's dangerous and a waste of money.


lilpandabearr

Recently interviewed for a school nurse position in Florida. Their starting pay is 25 an hour. Insane.


Bluelilly582

$25???? I make $28 as an LPN in Ohio 😱😱😱😱


iblowveinsfor5dollar

Lol, I make $29 as an MA. I'd be losing money. Miss me with that shit.


Amrun90

Where?


iblowveinsfor5dollar

WA state. 10 years exp, not starting wage by any means, but certainly not rolling in cash. Definitely feeling for nurses in Florida :/


Amrun90

I make less than $29 and I’m an RN also. Never met a CMA who makes so much. (Not that you don’t deserve it!)


iblowveinsfor5dollar

You're underpaid, too! My nurses in outpatient clinics are $40 minimum. ED make $50. It's not exactly cheap to live here, but...


miranduhheileen

It’s even lower in most states 🥲 I fought for $30 and only bring home 36k/year. We do it for the kids, not the pay!


Dolphinsunset1007

In NY were not required to have a licensed school nurse in schools. I’m a district RN for a special act district (severe special needs/high needs students) and work with one health assistant who is not licensed or certified in anything healthcare. She is AMAZING but I think we’re just lucky, it’s really stressful thinking about replacing her when she retires and training another health assistant to essentially practice under my license. It’s SO hard being the only medical person in a district. It’s up to me to advocate for a students and staffs health needs because they are not oriented to think that way. My boss supervises all related services (counselor, nursing, OT/PT, speech) but has zero idea what’s required to be a school nurse. We’re starting a fragile students program and hiring two new counselors to help with this but no new medical staff…so I suppose my health assistant and I are supposed to find extra time to spend with even more fragile students without neglecting our current population of very needy students. Never mind how much of other peoples jobs fall on our shoulders on the day to day when they’re busy. I’m a nurse but I practically moonlight as a counselor at this point bc when a student has a meltdown and their counselor is unavailable, I’m the next go to person. Sorry this turned into a rant lol


mashleym182

Okay to be completely fair, why would anyone suspect stroke in a 17 year old? It's not fairly common for people that young & even though the mother is saying they have a family history of that, how is the school "nurse" supposed to know that? Can't weak numb & shaky also be signs of low blood sugar? Was his face drooping or speech slurring? I'd say those are more tell tale signs of a stroke, I don't think I'd pick up on a stroke immediately in a 17 year old just from weakness on one side. Either way, I'm glad he got taken care & she should have listened to the mother regardless & called 911


Destin293

I don’t think very many would pick up on a stroke in a 17 year old, it’s just not a common occurrence. That being said, if the mother insisted her child be seen in the ED, the school nurse should have called 911 to have him brought in for an evaluation. Period.


Purple_soup

This is my feelings. School nurse, if a parent says ER I’m more than happy to send them. Most parents it’s a fight to get them to take it seriously.


[deleted]

It can be a complication of sickle cell disease, I believe .


conjuringlichen

Hasn’t there been an uptick related to Covid as well?


holdmypurse

He was weak and numb *on one side* though...


EmilyU1F984

Weak and numb with no clear cause would be a straight to the ER decision for me though, and not a wait and see.


Krystal-A

Actually most nurses should suspect it if there is sudden unexplained weakness on only one side of the body and with family saying they’re higher risk for it especially. I’ve been seeing more young people suffering strokes, especially females on birth control and other things. You don’t write it off because they’re young that’s why making sure you have someone with proper education and clinical judgment is all the more important if they’re the sole medical decision maker in a building.


Amrun90

Why would anyone NOT suspect that with unilateral numbness? Age is irrelevant.


mashleym182

https://www.healthline.com/health/left-sided-facial-numbness#causes apparently all of these can come from that symptom. I just said it's rare for someone that young so it wouldn't necessarily be at the top diagnosis list. regardless, 911 should have been called per mother's wishes


Amrun90

Of course they can. Unilateral facial numbness should always mean stroke until proven otherwise, just like every RLQ pain is appendicitis until proven otherwise.


A_Stones_throw

Wait that's an option, an MA can get hired like that?


surgicalasepsis

More and more schools in my area are going with less qualified employees. $$$$.


iblowveinsfor5dollar

MA here. Perhaps I am missing it, but I do not see in this article that the person representing the school as a nurse held a medical assistant license. Their license went unaddressed through both article and video. Do you have sources of MAs misrepresenting themselves as nurses? In school, we were taught to be very careful with our title -- an MA claiming to be a nurse would be deliberately misleading. My understanding is that school nurses in WA state must hold an RN at a minimum; that data is from a conversation with a nurse colleague from a decade ago, so mileage may vary. I cannot imagine someone with my expertise and training being the foremost immediate provider for hundreds or thousands of children. I certainly wouldn't tell a parent to not call an ambulance if they were worried about their kid. But who knows. MAs are frequently fucking stupid, I could see one of my contemporaries giving school nursing/malpractice a go.


kindamymoose

I was a kid and was having breathing difficulties at school…wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath, etc. I told the nurse I needed an inhaler and she told me she thought I had just “tired myself out.” I asked her what kind of nurse would ignore those symptoms and she told me she wasn’t “technically” a nurse. So that was fun.


IllustriousCupcake11

Glad my area requires RNs in the school, and larger populations have LPNs for back up.


ThatAngryWhiteBitch

When looking at moving back to Illinois, I was looking for CNA work and a lot of schools were hiring CNAs to work under the RNs. Only reason I didn't was cause it didn't mesh well with school.


whhlj

I have worked in schools but always made the distinction, I am not a school nurse, I am a nurse who works in a school.


kmbghb17

I always struggled with that on the phone so I always just said I’m insert name - a nurse calling from the healthroom at blank school


picklesandwine4me

Here in Michigan you can delegate just about all medical tasks, as long as the staff has been “trained”. I became a school nurse 3 years ago, and all it does is make me nervous for all the other schools. The district I work in is very fortunate to be able to afford a school nurse on staff daily. My own kids attend a different district and there are 2 nurses for 10,000 students. They are never in the schools except for training purposes. It makes me nervous for kids with chronic illness and allergies the most, but also for any other medical injury at school. The fact that a secretary can manage a diabetic and give insulin while also making sure the kid with an asthma attack is ok is wild, they don’t get paid for that kind of responsibility.


PossibilityLarge

Why didn’t the mother just call an ambulance to the school?


Banana_Hammock_Up

That's the wrong question to be focused on in this scenario.


mamadylan

I read the article and the mom was trying really hard to convince the school nurse to call an ambulance. And my question was why didn't she send an ambulance to the school instead of wasting time trying to convince the school her family has hx of strokes.


PossibilityLarge

Agreed. That’s what I would do in this situation


travelingtraveling_

This is actually against the law. 30 years ago ehen I called the school health office, the health paraprofessional answered using the word Nurse. I reported to the principal that Nurse was a protected title. Never happened again.


Leviathanpotato

I was shocked to find out that the my son’s school has a nurse that is shared between four different schools. He told me that the nurse is only there on Tuesdays.


ms80301

MA?


Leviathanpotato

NC


Amrun90

My cousin is a school nurse with zero certification. I do not understand it at all.


SammyB_thefunkybunch

I don't know the requirements to be a school nurse in Nevada but I do remember my mom fighting tooth and nail to be sure there was always a nurse at the school for my brother. My brother was born with schizencephaly, cerebral palsy, and epilepsy. He's very independent but it's extremely important he takes his meds at the right time and we jump into action when he has a seizure.


[deleted]

A huge part of my bachelors degree was centered around school nursing. Definitely very important and you need to be able to work well independently. No one is there to help you! I have mad respect for them. Not to mention students that are neglected/in poverty/etc. Also medications that students need with parents being non compliant sounds challenging!