Ian Jarman RN shared this blog in the OSNA Discussion List this morning, and we wanted to make it publically available.
Oregon school nurses often work alone and have limited time in their busy schedules for their own professional development. School nurses need accessible, efficient guidance for their school health practices. The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated shortcomings in the development and dissemination of guidance, especially when time is of the essence. With multiple documents from multiple sources, school nurses, school administrators and parents are understandably left uncertain about the material that they have poured over repeatedly.
This confusion and resulting frustration has been evident in online school nursing message boards and at the many virtual trainings and “office hours” that so many of us attended religiously in hopes of finding clarity only to be left wanting more definitive answers.
Thanks to OSNA leadership and our steadfast state level support from the OHA School Nurse Consultant (Corinna Brower) and ODE School Health Specialist (Ely Sanders), our collective voice was heard loud and clear. Policy makers at OHA and ODE have come to better understand the value of school nurses’ input when creating directives and other informative materials.
In fact, ODE and OHA have both created grant opportunities enabling OSNA to form a working group of school nurses- initially referred to as the COVID-19 Technical Assistance Team. The school nurses who applied and were selected to the team have been busy building a new toolkit to assist with the 2022-2023 school year COVID-19/Communicable disease framework.
The current draft of the toolkit will be presented during the June 1, 2022 Special Topics Cafe between 3:30 and 5:00. Your input would be really valuable, so please join us! Register for the Special Topics Cafe here.