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When a middle school student in western Oregon tested positive for the coronavirus last month, Sherry McIntyre, a school nurse, quarantined the student’s two dozen football teammates. The players spent time together in the locker room without masks and were unable to return to school for at least 10 days, according to local rules.
Some parents took the news badly. They told Ms. McIntyre that she should lose her nursing license or accused her of violating her children’s rights to education. Another nurse in the county faced a similar backlash when she quarantined her volleyball team. This fall, they started locking office doors after facing constant hostility from parents.
“They’re calling us and saying we’re ruining their children’s athletic career,” Ms. McIntyre said. “They see us as enemies”
Throughout the pandemic, schools have been flashpoints, the source of heated debate about the threat posed by the virus and the best way to combat it. School nurses are on the front lines. They play a crucial role in keeping schools open and students safe, but have found themselves under fire for enforcing public health rules they didn’t make and cannot change.
This new academic year has been the hardest ever, they say. After a year of distance or blended learning, schools often reopen at full capacity; Many do this in the middle of the Delta surge and an escalating political war on “parental rights“To shape what happens in schools.
Although he is 12-15 years old suitable for vaccination Uptake has been slow since May; only 48 percent According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of children in that age group are fully vaccinated. The vast majority of primary school students who were vaccinated just two weeks ago are unvaccinated.
Nurses say they are juggling more Covid cases and quarantines – and more angry parents – than ever before. “I call myself firefighter and dentist because I feel like I’ve been putting out fires and pulling teeth all day,” said Holly Giovi, a school nurse in Deer Park, NY.
They say they are tired and overwhelmed. Some say they hated their job for the first time, while others are quitting, exacerbating the pre-pandemic school nursing shortage.
“Before Covid, I loved being a school nurse,” said Ms. McIntyre. He resigned last month.
‘More than Band-Aids and booboos’
Even before the pandemic hit, a school nurse’s job went far beyond dealing with playground abrasions.
School nurses manage chronic conditions such as diabetes and seizure disorders; performing vision, hearing and scoliosis screenings; ensuring students are up-to-date on vaccines and physical information; assisting in the development of personalized education plans for students with disabilities; help students manage stress and anxiety and more.
“You do so much more than Band-Aids and booboos,” Ms. Giovi said.
Most school nurses in the United States are responsible for covering more than one school. According to 2018 study. (A quarter of American schools have no paid nurses at all.) Most earn less than $51,000 a year.
“Initially, staff were understaffed and overworked,” said Mayumi Willgerodt, the study’s author and an expert in school nursing at the University of Washington.
School nurses now also managing isolation rooms for sick students, administering virus tests and recording results, contact tracing and tracking quarantine periods, all while trying to reassure worried parents and following frequently changing guidelines.
“We act as the de facto ministry of health” said Robin Cogan, a school nurse in Camden, NJ and clinical coordinator of the school nurse program at the Rutgers School of Nursing in Camden.
Julie Storjohann, a school nurse in Washington State, spends her days flipping through multiple spreadsheets – for students with Covid symptoms, for students with family members who have tested positive, and for students who are marked as close contacts of other students with Covid. There are different quarantine and testing requirements.
“I’m tired,” he said. “I was hoping this year would be a little better than last year, but actually worse.”
When a student tests positive, Ms. Storjohann initiates a painstaking contact tracing process, which may include trying to determine who the student was sitting next to at lunch or on the bus. He said students were allocated seats on the school bus, but they didn’t always stay in the seats, so he browsed the video footage from inside the bus.
“And I have to choose this student and those around him,” he said. “And they’re wearing a mask and they’re wearing a cap and a hat, and that’s impossible.”
And even though the Covid study seems to be all-consuming, students still get bloody noses, skinned knees, and head lice. “Or there’s a guard in room 104,” said Ms. Giovi. “Or the kid with a nut allergy accidentally ate his friend’s snacks and you’re reading the ingredient list too fast. None of this stops.”
Some nurses said they were falling behind on routine back-to-school duties such as vision screening and no longer had the time to pay as much personal attention as they used to.
Rosemarie, a school nurse on the East Side who requested full anonymity, recently noticed a student not wearing a hearing aid; He said he lost it days ago in the building.
“Pre-Covid, I used to go around with it and try to find that hearing aid,” she said. However, he had a student in the Covid isolation room and could not leave his post.
Erin Maughan, a specialist in school nursing at George Mason University, said many nurses work nights and weekends for no additional pay and still feel “moral distressed” because they can’t do everything. “At the same time,” he said, “how many hours can one last?”
The American Recovery Plan, this year’s Covid relief bill, provides funds that school districts can use to recruit more nurses, but many have struggled to fill open nursing positions even before the pandemic. “There are no people who would take the job,” said Linda Mendonça, president of the National Association of School Nurses.
Anger and abuse
The pandemic has also turned school nurses into unwelcome public health messengers, especially when parents tell their kids that their kids should stay away from school for two weeks.
Anne Lebouef, a school nurse in Louisiana, said she cried several times a week. “They’re yelling at you. They accuse you of being a scarecrow.”
The nurses stressed that not all parents are hostile and they understand why so many are disappointed and upset. Ms Lebouef said she has students who miss more days than they go to school due to repeated exposures and quarantines.
“I get nauseous when I have to call it a specific mom and I just want to cry,” she said. “I feel like a terrible person for depriving these children of education.”
Last year, Ms. Cogan runs a virtual support group for school nurses across the country. “It’s a safe space for school nurses to share their experiences,” she said, “and kind of download it and say: ‘This is difficult. I wrote my resignation letter 10 times. I’m about to surrender – can someone help discourage me, help me get through another day?”
Enough of the other nurses. McIntyre, who will start a new job as an operating room nurse in December, said: “It’s too much to deal with twice the workload we were paid before Covid.”
Vaccination of children under 12 can ease the burden on some school nurses, especially if it reduces the number of students they have to send home from school. (Students who are fully vaccinated no need for quarantine, CDC guidelines say.)
However, many nurses work in communities where vaccine skepticism is high and relatively few students are expected to get vaccinated.
Extended vaccine availability may also create new demands in their time. Ms Giovi said she expects a lot of questions from parents about vaccines, while Ms. Cogan said she expects many school nurses to take an active role in “building vaccine trust and leading efforts for vaccine compliance at school.”
It’s vital work, she said, but it’s also a job that could anger nurses even more from parents who oppose vaccines.
As the pandemic continues, school nurses had two urgent requests from parents: to keep their children at home when they are sick, and to be especially polite, as they say.
“We’re doing the best we can,” said Miss Storjohann, her voice trembling. He took a moment to collect himself, then added, “It’s just getting overwhelming.”
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