School nurses grapple with new normal amid pandemic
Guylaine Kinney isn’t sure what’s expected of her.
Kinney is a school nurse at McKinley School in Fairfield and president of the Fairfield Public Nurses Union. Like everyone else involved with the school system in Connecticut, she’s anxious and curious about the plans to reopen schools in the fall, after they were closed in March due to the COVID- 19 pandemic.
But she said she hasn’t seen a lot of specific guidance from the state, even in the reopening guidelines released by the state late last month. “There is a small section addressing the health issues ( of reopening), but there’s very little detail about the role of the school nurses,” Kinney said.
All she knows is that school nurses are supposed to isolate anyone with COVID- 19 symptoms. “( But) there are no guidelines about what I’m supposed to do other than put ( people) in a room and close the door,” Kinney said.
She’s not the only nurse struggling to figure out what her role will be when schools return in fall.
Gloria Ganino is a nurse at Fawn Hollow School in Monroe, and is on a committee in that town to put together a return- to- school plan.
“There are a lot of moving parts to make sure staff and students are safe when we go back to school,” she said.
Like Kinney, Ganino is a bit disappointed the state guidelines didn’t offer more direction for school nurses, but added that she realizes the guidelines are supposed to offer a broad overview of what is expected from districts, and it’s up to the districts themselves to provide that.
Bridgeport is also working out its return- to- school plan, and one of the members of that committee is Lizette Earley, supervisor for school health services in Bridgeport.
Earley said she sees the school nurses as “being the point person in each school building” to address health concerns. Yet the details of how that would work are still being decided.
The lack of clarity on what the return to school would look like for nurses is a bit disconcerting, Kinney said. She said about 35 nurses work in her district, and, to her knowledge, no one has said they don’t want to return to work when schools reopen. But she’s sure that they, like her, have concerns.
“There are a lot of things where we’re thinking ‘ How are we going to do this safely?’ ” Kinney said.
Alot of her questions focus on what to do when someone shows up at school with symptoms. One solution is to prevent that from happening in the first place, but Kinney said that seems like an impossibility.
Even before the pandemic, she said, “I saw a lot of kids come into school that shouldn’t be there.”
Another concern is how school nurses will handle their pre- existing responsibilities — such as treating kids with chronic health conditions, including asthma and diabetes — in addition to whatever they have to do to help monitor for COVID- 19.
“There are so many little details that need to be addressed,” Kinney said.
Ganino said a lot of her questions about the role of school nursing involve “nitty- gritty details” about protocols in this new normal. For instance, she said, in the past, if children had a fever, they could return to school once they went 24 hours fever- free, without the aid of medication.
“We have to look at changing that to fit at what’s going out with COVID,” she said. “It might be longer” before feverish kids can return to school.
Ganino is herself a mother of three whose children also will return to the Monroe schools in the fall. So, despite her questions and concerns, she said she’s working to stay upbeat, both for her children and for those she serves at the school.
“You have to project a positive attitude, so that your kids don’t get nervous,” she said.
But Ganino also looks forward to returning to school, and she knows there are a lot of school nurses who share that feeling.
“We’re excited to go back to see our students,” she said. “I’ve missed that interaction with students.”