If you want to make a school nurse laugh, ask them what a “normal day” looks like in their world. In the first few weeks on the job, Krystal Rigsby was juggling helping a kid who got his eyelashes stuck in his bottom eyelid from rubbing his eyes too much, with another kid who took a bad fall on the playground. For Rigsby, the transition from working with dialysis patients for 16 years to working with young students has been both a whirlwind and a rewarding experience.
“My transition to school nursing has given me and the schools I serve a greater insight to the importance of having a nursing professional available for our students,” Rigsby explained. “I have been able to step in and provide health education and services to the students and staff in districts that haven’t had a nurse in 30 years!”
The need for experienced school nurses was magnified at the height of the pandemic, when school nurses were faced with caring for sick students and staff and tracking COVID cases on top of the day-to-day bumps and bruises, ongoing health screenings, and loads of paperwork.
“What we were finding is that smaller districts or even the charter schools were having a hard time with hiring because of their geographic location. Since there was not a large pool of potential applicants, Region 10 decided to hire them as our employees,” Ginger Riggins, Region 10 Nursing and Health Program Coordinator said.
Thanks to funding through the COVID-19 Public Health Workforce Supplemental Grant, Region 10 assessed the needs of our districts and hired eight full-time and part-time school nurses to fill in the gaps and provide additional support. While some of the nurses spend a full day at one campus, others split their day between multiple schools within a particular geographic region.
“In the beginning, it was a work in progress,” Riggins explained. “You don’t know until you know what the biggest needs are and how we can best serve the needs of the students. It was a learning experience for all of us because the nurses we hired were coming straight from the hospital setting.”
Madison Gardner is one of the Region 10 School Nurses who went from working at a hospital to working alongside Wolfe City ISD District Nurse Candy Smith.
“I’ve learned that as a school nurse you have to be able to go with the flow and move from one thing to another very quickly,” Gardner shared. “I’ve always wanted to work with kids, so it was easy to fall in love with this job.”
In addition to providing direct support with on-site nurses, Region 10 has also developed a robust Nursing and School Health Services package to better serve the healthcare workers in our schools. The package includes multiple cohorts for school nurses, nurse leadership, new school nurses, nurse/health staff substitutes, and county school nurses. These cohorts are designed to educate and inform school nurses on a variety of topics including: school nursing practice, state and local health updates and resources, networking and collaboration, current health and nursing related topics. Additionally, Region 10 will provide nursing staff with summer professional development opportunities as well as on-site or virtual consultation, training, and technical support to meet the district’s needs.