Nursing school health back to shape Johnston County a leader in school health measures SMITHFIELD-- Johnston County Schools has developed a healthy plan to treat sick students furthering the district as a leader in school health. The leader behind the medical movement is Nursing Supervisor Jean Tripp and her staff. The team of 12 has developed a modern formula to cure aged technology used to report student health in the district. The team has developed an electronic system for compiling and reporting data to replace the previous method which required manual calculations. Now, a few clicks of a button can produce a report showing statistics such as 1,123 students were treated by school nurses by November 2004 and 2,166 had been treated by the same time this school year. By the end of November, the staff had already taught 57 health education classes, performed 407 vision screenings, 132 hearing screenings and 149 dental screenings, gone on 18 home visits and conducted 2,111 parent conferences. The electronic system has allowed the nursing staff to perform a comparison study of statistics each month and for each year. Tracking such data allows the department the capability to do things such as present facts that support the need for a new position in the department, to maintain a database for supplies, to watch staffing patterns, to compare data statewide and to share information with legislators in hopes of increasing funding for school health. The system has been so effective in Johnston County, Tripp and her staff have been invited to other counties to share the program's success. "This was created solely to improve the situation in Johnston County. I never dreamed it would go beyond that," Tripp commented. However, Tripp is known for going beyond the realm of Johnston County to bring back the best for her students. Most recently, she was one of 20 nursing supervisors from across the state named to serve on the School Nurse Leadership Institute. The institute was developed to bring nursing supervisors together to share supervisory skills and training that could then be taken back and used to mentor the nurses in each county and across the state. "It's something that's never been done before but we hope to offer it every year. We're the pilot group," Tripp said. The benefit, she added, is "We'll all receive the same information and regardless of the LEA that we serve, there will be a continuity of services. The ripples go out to your students, your parents and your community anytime you increase your knowledge base. That's what we hope to do," Tripp said. No goal is set too high for nurses in Johnston County where the profession is a calling. "School nurses are like pastors," Tripp said, "They're not just trained, they're called." School nurses are different from other medical professionals, she explained, because school nurses have to work on their own. They are the only medical professional in the school and must assess every situation, make a decision and stick with it. "There's no one else to call on," Tripp pointed out. Secondly, she said, school nurses must possess the ability to communicate effectively regardless of a persons education or socioeconomic status. In Johnston County, school nurses spend Mondays doing office work and at least 2.5 hours of staff development. Tuesday through Friday, the nurses must hit the schools. Each nurse serves three schools and rotates among them during the week. "Our students receive optimum care not to have a nurse in every school," Tripp noted. The schools are assigned in pods, grouping together those closest in geographic location so that nurses are never more than a few minutes from their assigned schools. A nurse's schedule can be grueling, Tripp admits. There are students to treat, medicines to administer, reports to provide, supplies to order, health education classes to teach, records to update, parent conferences to hold and care plans to write. "You may write up a care plan after hours in the parking lot of Wal-Mart or wherever you can get a parent to meet you," Tripp said. "Most parents are not home during the school day." As Tripp sees it, there's no room for anything less from her staff when more than 26,000 students are relying on them for care. Many of those are uninsured and school nurses are the primary health care provider. "This is a 24/7 job. You don't do school nursing to leave at 3 p.m. with your pocketbook on your arm," she commented. Tripp says each of her nurses has an expertise in some area of health care and possesses years of experience working with children and public health issues. What has kept them in the field of school health, she says, is that "there is no satisfaction equal to a child saying something like, 'I can see now,' and you know if it weren't for you, they never would have gotten glasses. You make a difference every single day." School nurses take treating patients a step further than diagnosing and treating ailments. "We not only minister to their physical needs, but to their hearts. They know we love them," Tripp said of her students. And that, she notes, is what has made Johnston County a leader in student health.
