School nurses are at the forefront of the COVID epidemic as schools reopen

In a forest fire Huge smoke mass In Montana, a school nurse, Karen Graf, was recently worried about the difficulty of assessing a child with dyspnea.

“Is it COVID? Asthma? Flu? Smoke in the air? Graf, 55, who manages other nurses in the county based at Billing’s Pioneer Elementary School, said today.

“Usually, I evaluate and evaluate in corridors and spaces near the classroom and move them to isolated locations as needed.”

Schools in the area of ​​Graf are back a month ago and the majority of children attend classes directly. Students are assigned to a small cohort of 4-6 people who spend all their time together. If someone in the group gets it COVID-19 (new coronavirus infection) (# If there is no character limit, add parentheses when it first appears, You need to isolate only that small bubble, not the entire classroom.

During the first week of Graf, people were “crazy” about the virus and didn’t think it was a problem. Wear a mask, She said.

“School nurses are more important than ever”

Throughout the country, school nurses are adapting to the new normal of the epidemic. They still manage everything from peeled knees and allergic reactions to chronic illness care and mental health issues.

But now they are also at the forefront of trying to stop the spread of the new coronavirus. School reopens.. They are teacher and staff education on contact tracking, forced masking, symptom screening, disease monitoring, and how and when to use personal protective equipment.

They are the ones who are called when a child or teacher shows signs of a COVID-19 warning in class.

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That is when the school has a nurse. According to, a quarter of US schools do not hire. Investigation It was published in the Journal of School Nursing in 2018.

“School nurses are more important than ever,” Laurie Combe, chairman of the National Association of Nurses, said in a statement in April that he demanded government funding for more than 10,000 jobs. I did.

Buy 1000 thermometers

Juanita Gryfinski has a pool of 1,500 potential patients. This is the number of students attending middle school in St. Charles, Illinois, and she works as a certified nurse. She did some unusual new jobs this year, including ordering 1,000 digital oral thermometers and teaching children how to use them.

Temperature check It’s important during an epidemic, but she said that many people don’t keep their thermometers at home.

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The Griffinsky district was one of the first districts in the Chicago area to return to face-to-face instruction in mid-August. High schools are remote until October, but middle and high schools are open with a number of precautions.

Students can only enter the room after completing and passing the daily online symptom checker. Classroom desks are spaced 6 feet apart, children take turns, corridors are one-way only, classes are held outdoors as much as possible, and students sit on lawn chairs. A mask is required.

In the first month of the semester, Gryfinski says it takes “a considerable amount of time” to follow up with daily symptom checkers, but she and other school nurses continue to teach face-to-face. We are focusing on that.

“Are we tired? Yes, but we know what we are doing and we are doing it well,” said the President of the Illinois School Nurses Association. But 64-year-old Griffinsky said.

“I must say that I’m pretty surprised how well the kids have done, even our little ones.”

School nurses as “first responders”

Parents were one of her biggest concerns. Gryfinski knows that a COVID-19 case will occur at school, and worried student families want to return to remote learning immediately if remote learning occurs. But even if the school announced the incident and demanded quarantine from some students, teachers, or staff, Gryffinsky said he was able to prove safe to attend classes.

Both she and Graf feel safe at work and wear PPEs such as N-95 masks, face shields, gowns and gloves when assessing potentially ill students and staff.

Municipal obligations provide guidance on the next steps, including contact tracking, notification of suspicious cases to the health department, inspection of household members, quarantine or quarantine.

However, some school nurses are worried about the risks of COVID-19 while working as “first responders” in a dilapidated school building with an outdated ventilation system, a veteran nurse in New Jersey. One Robin Cogan writes. USA Today..

“I foresee that we are doing something very dangerous,” she warned.

Influenza season brace

Flu season It can make things even more complicated. However, there is a better understanding of the symptoms of COVID-19 in children — Gryffinsky, if any. She pointed out that many children may be asymptomatic or have abdominal pain and congestion rather than the typical flu-related sore throat, cough, and high fever.

The concern is to spread the disease to the more vulnerable people in the community. Graf’s school district constantly monitors various indicators to determine if the school should be open for face-to-face learning.

Teachers, parents and students are happy to have them, and so is her.

“I get this kind of satisfaction just by hearing the kids laughing in the playground and the violinist starting to play for the first time and hearing the squeaks. Sometimes I get how those sounds are. I think I forgot what I heard, “Graf said.