Why I Love Being A School Nurse

School Nurse, Yvette, explains why she loves the role, touching on why it’s so fulfilling to support children through their healthcare journey, and how the learning never stops.

Topics covered in this article

Introduction

Interacting With Children & Young People

Flexibility & Lone Working

Building A Rapport With Children & Families

Wearing My Own Clothes

The Learning Never Stops

Supporting Children & Young People Throughout Their Journey

Would I Recommend School Nursing?

Introduction

Hi everyone, welcome, welcome back with another video.

Now let's get into it.

So today's video, we'll be talking about why I love being a School Nurse, and hopefully giving some insights into what it's really like.

Now, for those of you that don't know what a School Nurse is, School Nurses across education and health provided a link between school, home and the community.

Interacting With Children & Young People

So, first of all, the first thing I love, I love, I love about being a School Nurse is literally interacting with children and young people.

Also, insure an early intervention happens on time.

Now early interventions can be done through health assessments, where you identify the need of children, young people and their families, and help support them by implementing measures that help support identified needs.

Health promotion is something that I love so much.

So oftentimes we have health promotion incentives provided by the government or local authority.

However, my favourite part of health promotion is targeted health promotion.

Now again, this can be done through health assessments or health assessment needs of a school.

So oftentimes we can find that there is a regular pattern in a particular year group, or this can be through a whole school approach.

Now School Nurses are then able to innovate and put in measures to help support the identified need.

This can be done through assemblies, group activities or teacher training.

I really enjoy the communication between the wider community and ensuring that children and young people fulfil their full educational potential.

Flexibility & Lone Working

Another thing I love about school nursing will have to be the flexibility and lone working.

Now, I know sometimes there can be disadvantages to lone working, but for me, I found that lone working allowed me to become more confident and more responsible and accountable for the role and the service I am providing.

Not to say that when you're working on a ward and you're part of a team, you are not accountable or responsible, but I find that in school nursing and lone working, the advantage is, is that you're able to improve your skills.

And in fact, improve your leadership and management skills.

Through leadership and management skills and lone working, you are able to build a sense of confidence as you are aware of the role that you're doing.

You have undergone training, which you to become autonomous and make decisions with children and young people at the centre at all times.

Building A Rapport With Children & Families

Another thing I absolutely love again, about school nursing is building a rapport with children, young people and their families.

You can often find that you have children and young people that are within a family of different year groups.

This allows you to be more involved and help support a family eventually achieve their goals and fulfil their full educational potential.

Wearing My Own Clothes

Another thing I must say that I love about school nursing is wearing my own clothes.

Now I know that sometimes we find that uniform is better in the sense where it saves you time and you're not really spending money, but wearing my own clothes in settings with children and young people allows it to be somewhat informal.This contributes to the relationships that you build with your children, young people, and the families that you come across.

Therefore, this contributes to a level of high quality care provided to the children and young people in your care.

The Learning Never Stops

Another thing I love about school nursing is that the learning never stops.

There's always a course available that you can go on to enhance your skills and therefore contribute to your ongoing learning professional development as a nurse.

Supporting Children & Young People Throughout Their Journey

Also, one thing I love about school nursing is people sometimes find that, oh, it's just about giving vaccinations, but School Nurses are actually public health nurses.

Public health nurses concentrate on the population as a whole, so therefore, although we are School Nurses and our service users are five to 19, our incentives help support the wider population, also allows us to put in measures that will help support children and young people for later life.

Therefore we ensure that early intervention is one of our first aims during health assessments.

Another thing I love about school nursing is following children and young people through their journey, seeing them to the end of their journey, ensuring that they have a positive experience at school and outside of school.

In their family homes, within their friendships really allows me to feel fulfilled in the role that I am doing.

Would I Recommend School Nursing?

Yeah, why not?

If it's something that you're interested in, then go for it.

The school nursing role also allows you to go back to university and study and therefore become a specialist community public health nurse.

Whilst you're in this course, I have learnt so much about the wider community.

So much about my practice as a nurse, and it's actually allowed me to challenge my own practice and therefore improve and provide a high quality standard of care.

If you are thinking about becoming a School Nurse, here is a previous video I made about what you need to consider.

Thank you for listening guys, and stay tuned to our next video, bye.