Volume 13, Number 3, 2005
Mxonica Moore, one of the first nurses to enroll in UD’s new, comprehensive, basic school-nurse certificate program, says she uses what she learned in the courses every single day on the job.
“It was all working knowledge, very hands-on and immediately applicable in my practice,” Moore says of the yearlong program.
Moore, CHS ’95, is a nurse at Hodgson Vocational-Technical High School in Newark, Del. She says she was relieved the new program was in place in time for her certification because she worked with a nurse who completed the state’s requirements under the old program and found the logistics difficult.
“There were a lot of required pieces that she had to fulfill individually, pieces that the program provided for me without me having to search for this part here and this part there,” Moore says. “I can do all the requirements in a year’s time, and it was all provided for me very efficiently.”
All 238 public school nurses in Delaware must be certified in that specialty. As Moore has found, certification is simpler since Janice Selekman, professor of nursing and author of a soon-to-be-released textbook for school nurses, mapped out a program designed to focus on the specific skills needed for the job. Those school nurses hired since October 2003 are required to complete the new certification process, while those who already were on the job before that time completed the earlier set of requirements.
Students in the program, who may or may not already be working as school nurses, can learn in clusters and can view lectures on handy, take-home CD-ROMs. The curriculum includes a seminar on state mandates and instruction in such topics as how to counsel students who come into the nurse’s office, how to provide students health-related information, communicable diseases and writing an individualized health-care plan. Lab experiences encompass school-nurse duties from conducting screenings for vision, hearing and posture to taking care of students with special needs.
Selekman says she fashioned the course to cover exactly what school nurses in Delaware need to know to do their jobs. The certification can be completed in one year, and the academic credits can be used toward a master’s degree. The students observe nursing practices in their own neighborhood schools.
Selekman arranged the program so that academic components can be completed during the summer, when the tuition for nurses working in Delaware public schools is paid by the state.
Linda Wolfe, CHS ’79, health services specialist with the Delaware Department of Education and immediate past president of the National Association of School Nurses, worked with Selekman to establish the new certification requirements.
“We knew that we were going to be changing our regulations and that there was this window of opportunity, so we used it to really raise the bar for school nursing in Delaware,” Wolfe says.
In previous years, she says, nurses often called her department because they might have had difficulty finding a particular required course or they might have found a communicable disease course that focused on hospital treatment rather than school screening. She says the goal of the new program is to provide training that specifically focuses on what happens in school nurses’ offices.
“I’m hoping it’s more accessible for them and that it’s a more meaningful experience for them because it is being taught in Delaware about things that are going on in Delaware schools,” Wolfe says.
Another of the program’s first students is Elise Kidd, CHS ’83, ’92M, who worked for 20 years as a public health nurse before deciding to take on the challenge of school nursing. She enrolled in the certification program while working at the 1,600-student Christiana High School near Newark. Despite her extensive nursing experience and her graduate degree, she says she has found the courses extremely helpful.
“People are coming into school nursing from all different kinds of nursing backgrounds and specialties, so you really need training on the specific demands of working in a school,” Kidd says.
Not only is Kidd working in a new setting, but her clients have changed significantly as well. Her public health nursing focused on children from birth to age 3, and she says that seeing teenagers in a high school nurse’s office is a very different experience.
“It’s a really interesting job, but it’s also complicated, because it covers so many areas of nursing,” she says. “I see everything from sports injuries to mental health issues.”
Moore agrees. “When you’re a school nurse, every day is different, and you have to be prepared,” she says.