Job expands for school nurses

By Christine Haines

chaines@yourmvi.com

School nurses are finding themselves in a role that few ever imagined.

“We’re now supporting staff, we’re supporting administration, we’re reaching out to families. It’s no longer an 8 to 4 job,” said Bethany Kilinsky, the nurse at Elizabeth Forward Middle School.  “I have my phone forwarded to my cell phone so I’m available nights and weekends. The Sunday before Christmas, it was a good 10 hours.”

Kilinsky said she works so closely with the Allegheny Health Department that she has the personal cell phone number of the chief epidemiologist.

“Many of the things we are mandated to do every year have become more difficult because everyone is home for the safety of the school community,” said Dana Cannon, the middle school/high school nurse in the Charleroi Area School District. “We can’t do the screenings.”

Cannon said school nurses usually do annual screenings for height, weight, vision and hearing, sending home referrals to families if follow-up is needed. In gym classes, they used to teach CPR.

“But we haven’t been able to do that because we aren’t there,” Cannon said.

Instead, like  other school administrators, school nurses are learning on the fly as pandemic protocols seem to change on a daily basis.

“When this all started, no one was an expert on isolating and quarantining,” Cannon said. “We learned from the Department of Health.”

Many area school nurses found themselves on the pandemic teams with administrators, in regular contact with county health officials and piecing together the best strategies to keep students and staff healthy while an educational plan was also developed.

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