I’ve been nursing for almost 20 years and have never been able to find a specialty of nursing that I love until I showed up as a school nurse. Christmas after Christmas, holiday after holiday, weekends, evenings, nights, doubles, split shifts, on-call shifts, and extra shifts, I have worked them all. And now here I am...Nurse Kevin...school nurse for 1100
Year: 2017
Ringworm at School – The Fungus Among Us
You ever get an itch? Sure you do; we all itch once in a while. The challenge is: Can you get through this article without scratching...nope...you’re already noticing an itchy spot, right? It's not a parasite, it's a fungus! Okay...that video was way out of line...well...maybe not "way out." Anyway... Let’s talk a quick bit about ringworm, or tinea, to be more
Do Lice Live In My Christmas Tree?
A study by Bjart Jordal Associate Professor at the University of Bergen , "There are a number of insects hiding in a Christmas tree.” The bugs come into your house like on a Trojan Horse being “welcomed” into you home while hiding in the inner workings of the bark. During the summer months, the bugs are active and...well...doing what bugs do: Eat,
Thunderstorm Asthma
Have you ever noticed that the number of asthma-suffering children who seek help from the school nurse increases just after a storm front has moved through? A lot of factors play a role in the wide-spread exacerbation of individual asthmatic symptoms. But when we notice many of the children coming for their rescue inhaler seemingly all at once and just
Cause I Ain’t Got a Pencil
A Short Tale of How I Have Begun to Understand the Children About this time during my first year as a school nurse, I had just finished working 78 days in a row without a day off. I thought being a school nurse would be great! But you know the old saying, “If it’s so great, why isn’t everyone doing it?”
Wear Blue – World Diabetes Day November 14th
November 14th is World Diabetes Day. You don’t only have to wear blue…you can BE BLUE. Blue hair, Blue fingernails, Blue make up, Blue…well…what every you want to make BLUE! We all have heard of Diabetes. It comes in many different forms: diabetes mellitus type one, diabetes mellitus type two, diabetes insipidus and gestational diabetes. Diabetes is a condition that is characterized by either how the pancreas secretes insulin or how the body
School Teachers vs. School Nurses – 3 Reasons to Listen
Two teachers came to visit me today. They were polite as they approached me with a few questions. At first I didn’t know what to think; I didn’t feel like they were teaming up on me, the school nurse. But I did feel they were attempting to “tread on thin ice.” Funny thing is: My ice is pretty thick. “We wanted
Concussion Symptoms Assessment for the School Nurse
“Whoa, man! What happened to you? Did you get in a fight with a ninja?” A little kindergartner enters the health office with a huge goose egg on his right forehead. “I bet you licked him, didn’t you?” Of course, without a frame of reference, the kinder looks at me sideways, kinda like a puppy who just heard a funny,
Hepatitis A Outbreak – To Immunize or Not to Immunize
State Of Emergency Over Deadly Hepatitis A Outbreak "California declared a state of emergency Friday (October 13th, 2017) after a deadly Hepatitis A outbreak has spread faster than the state’s ability to supply the vaccine that can ward off the disease." says Jack Davis over at westernjournalism.com. A “state of emergency” says it all; in the entire year of 2015 there
We’re Going to Be Friends
I love the movie Napoleon Dynamite (I’m from Idaho…all 1.68 million of us like it). It just makes me feel excited about going back to school. After the opening credits, Napoleon quietly awaits the school bus on his first day of school. After getting on the school bus another kid asks, “What are you going to do today, Napoleon?” Napoleon shoots