Years ago I was a phlebotomist. Yep. I was in nursing school back in 1994 and picked up a job at the local hospital for $4.50 per hour. I was green, as green as they come...my son would refer to me a “noob” if phlebotomist were video gamers. My job was to gather urines from the floors (having been collected
Tag: school
Vision Screening – The School Nurse Guide
The school year is progressing along lickety split! We've been back to school for 94 days and have 197 left until summer break... including weekends and holidays...not that I'm counting or anything like that. Allergies...CHECK! Immunizations…CHECK! Vision screening... CHECK! What's next? Follow-ups for sure (with puberty class lingering). You can tell I am a school nurse for elementary school students.
Posterior Urethral Valves (PUV) – The School Nurse Guide
Tubes everywhere! Remember...way back…(WAY WAY back for old nurses like me). Remember way back to your pre-nursing days and your A&P class? You know what I’m talking about. Those poor frogs…I’ll mention those poor critters at the end of this article. From the inner workings of our cells to the inner workings of each and every body system, we learned all
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) – Eight Points to Remember
Here we are. Safe-and-sound doing our day-to-days; work, home, dinner, sleep, and up the next morning to do it all over again. Work is okay. School is okay. And, life is okay. We worry about this and that. We contemplate debt, mortgages, jobs, friends, family and what’s for dinner. Our Facebook feed parallels a life that, for the most part,
A Kid With A Rash Walks Into Your Office…
Right now you’re likely seeing...in your mind...that child who walked into your office last school year with a “what-is-that” kind of rash. You know—that itchy, burn-ey, bumpy, scaly, red rash that causes you to pause and wonder, “What the heck did this child get into?!” And summer time is rash season! “But summer’s over, Nurse Kevin.” You’re right and wrong. All
6 Tips for the School Nurse to get the most out of SUMMER!
Next year...it seems silly to be thinking about next school year here at the end of this school year. We have 3 days until we...well...until we don’t have to show up to the schoolhouses each morning. On the flip side, we have 70 days until we certified staff start a brand-new school year. But who’s counting, right? This article will be
School Nurse Guide to Stevens-Johnson Syndrome
School Nurse Guide to Stevens-Johnson Syndrome A couple of articles ago, I wrote about “grey gorilla nurses” and how every nursing “arena” needs these been-there-and-done-that kinda of nurses. We have a couple or three of those awesome school nurses at our district. Having spent 10+ years in hospice, I was one that received the calls from fellow hospice nurses asking this-and-that.
School Nurse Grey Gorilla
Find Your School Nurse Grey Gorilla I am entering into my 22nd year as a nurse...and some years back (seemingly in a different life)...back in nursing school...we learned our nursing-trade basics from the best of the best of the best. These ladies were published in RN and Nursing magazines and would tell stories of the days where they would re-powder gloves
School Nurse’s Guide to the Dehydrated Child
When I was a kid in school, the blissful hour was the last hour of school. It was that hour when we knew “freedom” was being counted in minutes rather than hours. Then there was Ms. Foster. Yes...Ms. Foster....who, during the last 60 seconds of the last period would mozey over to the door to “dismiss” us after the completion
School Nurse Guide to Measles – Rubeola
(MEE-zills) “Nurse Kevin, we don’t believe in immunizations; we feel that we should allow our child’s own immune system to get strong.” There are many, many different objections parents give me about immunizations, but this one was...well...I had never heard one like this before. Truth be known, why don’t we just ask our children to lick the inside rim of a