The story of Pitt County North Carolina schools should be a wake-up call for many districts across the country that have relied on Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to boost school nursing services. The content of this blog post is in response to the following article: Expiration of COVID funding could cost schools nursing positions
The Relentless School Nurse: Is This Happening in Your School District?
Published by Robin Cogan, MEd, RN, NCSN, FNASN, FAAN
Robin Cogan, MEd, RN, NCSN, FNASN, FAAN, is a Nationally Certified School Nurse (NCSN), currently in her 22nd year as a New Jersey school nurse in the Camden City School District. Robin is the Director for New Jersey to the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) Board. She is proud to be a Johnson & Johnson School Health Leadership Fellow and past Program Mentor. Robin is the honored recipient of multiple awards for her work in school nursing and population health. These awards include, 2019 and 2020 National Association of School Nurses President’s Award, 2018 NCSN School Nurse of the Year, 2017 Johnson & Johnson School Nurse of the Year, and the New Jersey Department of Health 2017 Population Health Hero Award. Robin serves as faculty in the School Nurse Certificate Program at Rutgers University-Camden School of Nursing, where she teaches the next generation of school nurses. She was presented the 2018 Rutgers University – Camden Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award for Part-time Faculty. Robin writes a weekly blog called The Relentless School Nurse. She also writes a monthly column in My American Nurse, the official journal of the American Nurses Association. Robin’s work is included as a case study in The Future of Nursing Report 2020-2030. You can follow Robin on Twitter at @RobinCogan. View all posts by Robin Cogan, MEd, RN, NCSN, FNASN, FAAN
Wow, timing is everything! Our staffing levels never approached the ones in this article. We have one RN in every school. The dynamics are the same however, just as they are everywhere.
Because of ESSR funds we have a (NEVER SAY EXTRA) PT position nurse coordinator who doubled as fairly accessible sub. It was win/win all over the place. There was a lot of back tracking to be done to try to restore some order post COVID, give the nurses breathing room, help them regroup, heal, move forward and manage the new realities of the school health office detailed in the linked article.
That position expires tonight at 11:59. I am that position. Tadaaah, finito, come midnight, no longer in a contracted position in my school district. I’m not going to scratch the surface of what that really means (there’s a whole lot of good and a whole lot of other)…..going to have to write a whole post on that but it does beg the question, “isn’t there a better way to do this?”