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From Magic City Morning Star Letters
Tony: I read a copy of your article in the Nurse's Digest, and was appalled and 'sickened' by your biased, and ignorant article on the 'sick' idea of having a nurse in every public school. As an RN of 26+years, I had reached the salary ceiling of my profession. I had to take a substantial reduction in pay to go into the public school. Do you have children, Tony? Did you bother to research the happenings at any given public school, on any given day? Or, as I suppose, did you blindly rush in where FOOLS fear to tread? I am the RN in a rural, poverty stricken district of just over 2000 students. The only health professional that a lot of our students ever see is the school nurse. We also have an LVN. She and I stay VERY busy everyday, but spend less than a total of 1 hour per day actually giving out pills. Would you like to know what we do? Well, I'm going to tell you just a portion of our responsibilities! This week, I will have spent over 6 hours doing vision and hearing screens on our 7th grade students. We V/H screen about 600 students per year. We also keep up with immunization records and work to keep our students in compliance with the state regulations, as well as filing the state reports. We also do Spinal screening on over 200 students per year, along with filing those state reports. We communicate with the parents regarding any impairments,and make referrals. We put our a quarterly health and wellness newsletter, promoting awareness and positive lifestyle changes. We organize and coordinate the required Student Health Advisory Committee, and coordinate the meetings, wellness initiatives, and state reports. We also help with the District and community emergency preparedness efforts, performing the safety audits and filing reports. We hold free flu clinics for our staff and students, greatly reducing our absenteeism each year. We are responsible for coordinating and teaching our CPR, 1st aid and AED training for students and staff and obtaining and maintaining the required certifications. We offer health screenings for our staff, and help to put together our district wide sex education programs. We see between 25-45 sick students per day, and are able to assess and treat most of them so that they can return to class. We train diabetic care assistants among the staff, and care for our diabetic students whose blood glucose levels can quickly drop so low or jump so high, that they lose conciousness.We sponsor the School Walk for Diabetes, which helps raise awareness, educate, and raise money for the cure. We also hold educational fundraisers for the American Heart Assoc., and the Leukemia Foundation. Then there'd the care for the HS student that hung herself last year in the BR. CPR was performed, she was transported and is alive today. If that had been your child, or niece, would you have wanted a trained health professional on the spot? What about the student who had an average of 3 or more seizures per day, requiring the care of a nurse. We must also maintain numerous CEU training credits yearly to stay abreast of the issues effecting pre-schoolers thru high school. We provide a program for pregnant students, with regular check-ups, and educational efforts, extending into the new parent phase-trying to encourage them to complete highschool. This programs places more demand on our time and energy, but hopefully, will make a big impact on the mother's and her baby's live. It also helps bring in extra revenue to our district. This is only a prortion of what we nurses do everyday. If we were not present to do the job- who would? Are you willing to risk the health or even the lives of our kids to save the almighty dollar? Would you be if it were your child? I challenge you to print this rebuttal! Sincerely, Sharlene Crim, RN
Editor's Note: As a former paramedic of more than twenty years, who has parented a child with reactive attachment disorder, I can assure you that Mr. Zizza's opinions are his own, and do not necessarily represent those of the Magic City Morning Star, although I will say that I agree with him more often than not. Our decision to publish an article has nothing to do with our agreement or disagreement with the opinions expressed. As long as we still enjoy freedom of speech in this country, which could end at any moment, we will utilize our right to freedom of the press to give voice to a variety of opinions. -- Ken Anderson © Copyright 2002-2008 by Magic City Morning Star |