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Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/painter/2009-08-02-yourhealth03_N.htm
Your health: School nurses on high alert for signs of swine flu
By Kim Painter, USA TODAY
As millions of children in the USA return to classrooms over the next few weeks, parents, teachers and health officials will watch anxiously to see how soon and how hard schools are hit with new outbreaks of swine flu, or H1N1.
And no one will be watching more closely than the nation's school nurses.
"It's going to be an interesting year," says Sandi Delack, president of the National Association of School Nurses. If and when hordes of feverish, coughing kids start showing up in school clinics or calling in sick, school nurses may well be the first to notice ? and to sound alarms.
"We'll be looking at absentee rates, watching for symptoms and clusters," says Kathleen Murphy, a registered nurse who coordinates health services and supervises 93 nurses in Milwaukee's public schools, some of which open today. The Milwaukee nurses are armed with new flu-symptom tracking sheets they'll use to update area health officials.
Two Wisconsin teens have died from H1N1, Murphy says. Nationwide, the largest numbers of confirmed and probable cases have occurred in people ages 5 to 24, says the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No one knows how widespread fall and winter outbreaks will be or whether the new flu will be any more severe than regular seasonal flu. But school-age children are on the government's priority list for H1N1 vaccines and may even be vaccinated in schools.
In San Joaquin County, Calif., "we are very busy preparing for this," says Sheri Coburn, a registered nurse who directs health services for schools there. Officials in her area have agreed, she says, to move teams of school nurses from county to county, if needed, to staff vaccination clinics.
Nurses also say they are busy thinking of new, louder ways to preach prevention.
In San Joaquin, teachers will get notes in their paychecks reminding them to wash their hands often and stay home when they are sick, Coburn says. Murphy says her district already has sent notes to parents urging, "Don't be scared, be prepared." And all over the country, nurses will be showing up at year-opening PTA meetings and school assemblies to talk about hand-washing, cough-covering and keeping sick children at home, Delack says.
If nurses called upon to do this extra work need inspiration, they may find it in Mary Pappas. Pappas is the sole school nurse at Saint Francis Preparatory School in New York City ? the school where the first wave of swine flu hit hard back in April.
As Pappas recounted for a riveted audience recently at a federal flu summit, she knew something was up the morning more than 100 kids lined up outside her small office. She managed the crowd, she recalled, by enlisting a security guard to take temperatures and post results on students' shirts with sticky notes. Then she had kids pull out their own cellphones to call their parents for rides home.
In an interview, Pappas said she has been getting e-mails and letters from fellow school nurses, thanking her for demonstrating the importance of their profession. (The school nurse association is waging a constant campaign to increase the numbers of nurses in schools and discourage their replacement with less-trained aides.)
Pappas says on-the-spot thinking is part of the job description: "You may have a great plan on paper, but once you're in an emergency, things have to be tweaked."
That said, she is planning ahead for the school year. She has ordered forehead thermometers to replace the time-consuming oral versions. And she has reserved a corner of the school auditorium as a holding spot ? just in case another big, coughing crowd shows up.
Your health: School nurses on high alert for signs of swine flu
By Kim Painter, USA TODAY
As millions of children in the USA return to classrooms over the next few weeks, parents, teachers and health officials will watch anxiously to see how soon and how hard schools are hit with new outbreaks of swine flu, or H1N1.
And no one will be watching more closely than the nation's school nurses.
"It's going to be an interesting year," says Sandi Delack, president of the National Association of School Nurses. If and when hordes of feverish, coughing kids start showing up in school clinics or calling in sick, school nurses may well be the first to notice ? and to sound alarms.
"We'll be looking at absentee rates, watching for symptoms and clusters," says Kathleen Murphy, a registered nurse who coordinates health services and supervises 93 nurses in Milwaukee's public schools, some of which open today. The Milwaukee nurses are armed with new flu-symptom tracking sheets they'll use to update area health officials.
Two Wisconsin teens have died from H1N1, Murphy says. Nationwide, the largest numbers of confirmed and probable cases have occurred in people ages 5 to 24, says the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No one knows how widespread fall and winter outbreaks will be or whether the new flu will be any more severe than regular seasonal flu. But school-age children are on the government's priority list for H1N1 vaccines and may even be vaccinated in schools.
In San Joaquin County, Calif., "we are very busy preparing for this," says Sheri Coburn, a registered nurse who directs health services for schools there. Officials in her area have agreed, she says, to move teams of school nurses from county to county, if needed, to staff vaccination clinics.
Nurses also say they are busy thinking of new, louder ways to preach prevention.
In San Joaquin, teachers will get notes in their paychecks reminding them to wash their hands often and stay home when they are sick, Coburn says. Murphy says her district already has sent notes to parents urging, "Don't be scared, be prepared." And all over the country, nurses will be showing up at year-opening PTA meetings and school assemblies to talk about hand-washing, cough-covering and keeping sick children at home, Delack says.
If nurses called upon to do this extra work need inspiration, they may find it in Mary Pappas. Pappas is the sole school nurse at Saint Francis Preparatory School in New York City ? the school where the first wave of swine flu hit hard back in April.
As Pappas recounted for a riveted audience recently at a federal flu summit, she knew something was up the morning more than 100 kids lined up outside her small office. She managed the crowd, she recalled, by enlisting a security guard to take temperatures and post results on students' shirts with sticky notes. Then she had kids pull out their own cellphones to call their parents for rides home.
In an interview, Pappas said she has been getting e-mails and letters from fellow school nurses, thanking her for demonstrating the importance of their profession. (The school nurse association is waging a constant campaign to increase the numbers of nurses in schools and discourage their replacement with less-trained aides.)
Pappas says on-the-spot thinking is part of the job description: "You may have a great plan on paper, but once you're in an emergency, things have to be tweaked."
That said, she is planning ahead for the school year. She has ordered forehead thermometers to replace the time-consuming oral versions. And she has reserved a corner of the school auditorium as a holding spot ? just in case another big, coughing crowd shows up.