With the responsibility of caring for multiple students at a time that are sick, contagious, or in pain, school nursing can be very stressful. Not to mention, many students at Northmont take the nurse for granted which can make ten job even harder. That’s why for this edition of What It’s Like, I decided to interview our nurse, Ms. Moody.
Did you know teachers go to the nurse too? Ms. Moody even said it happens “more than you would think.”
One interesting part of nursing that I had never thought of before is that “There is just opportunities upon opportunities to offer education on health and health related issues to students in this setting. Everything from wellness to health prevention. And things that go beyond what students realize from a day-to-day standpoint, just in using over the counter medication to proper hand washing, especially since coming off of Covid.”
For those considering becoming a school nurse, you actually need a degree for school nursing specifically. For example, in Ms. Moody’s case she “had an RN with an associate’s degree to begin with, and worked in an ER in an ICU,” but then she decided to be a school nurse. To do that, she told me, “I had to go back to school to get my bachelor’s and after my bachelors, I had to do some graduate work to get my license for school nursing. So, yeah, I had to climb the ladder a little bit higher.”
For Ms. Moody, days as a nurse are pretty unpredictable. She said that on typical day:
“I usually come in in the morning, I get here early, so that I can stock the clinic and prepare everything. I like to have everything ready when the students come, because I never know what my day is going to be like. I have students that take medicines, so I like to make sure that they’re all ready to go…I work on the paperwork stuff, because that takes a lot of time. Reports for the state and everything. But, I take care of students as needed: emergencies and I see students in the clinic. I mean, sometimes clinic visits can be anywhere between 30-60+ a students a day. It just depends. I mean, we’re in the height of flu season, so my visits can be pretty high and I have help two and a half days a week. Having that help is very appreciated because it gets hairy in here when all of the cots are full and all of the chairs are full and people don’t feel good when they get impatient. So, then, cleaning in between to make sure that we’re keeping the environment as clean as we can…and…I usually leave after the students are gone.”
Lastly, Ms. Moody had some advice for all for the high schoolers reading this, “Be true to yourself. Live a healthy life. And be kind, because that’s all that matters.”
