By Allison Maass
Murphy News Service
Licensed school nurses (LSN) at Edina do more than just first aid for students, they are health educators and promoters for students and their families.
This is Anna Sonday’s first semester at Edina Public School District as an LSN. During the week she divides her time between early childhood special education, Normandale Elementary and the non-public elementary schools in Edina. She can be found working directly with students, creating emergency plans for kids, filling out special education evaluations or planning upcoming field trips.
But what Sonday likes best about her job is the opportunity she is given to educate students and their families.
“I like seeing kids grow in the understanding of themselves, particularly students with disabilities who start to understand their disability and advocate for themselves,” Sonday said. “It can be a light bulb moment that teachers talk about. I think as a LSN you experience the same thing,”
With over 8,300 kids in Edina public schools and almost 60,000 visits to the nurses’ office, Sonday has the ability to see many light bulb moments. She thought about becoming a special education teacher for a while, but likes nursing because she can make “big structural” changes that can affect the whole school and even the district.
Sonday has already started working on those changes at the non-public schools. One thing she is trying to do is standardize the protocol for when to call her, like if a new medication comes in, and when not to. There has not been much stability with school nurses in the past for these schools, so she wants to work to get everyone on the same page
“It’s harder to make procedural changes in the non-public schools because they all do things so differently, but that is one of the things that I am working on this year is trying to standardize it a little bit more,” Sonday said.
Our Lady of Grace, Calvin Christian Elementary School, Golden Years Montessori and Chesterton Academy are the non-public elementary schools Sonday works at. Almost 1,000 kids attend the private schools in Edina and last year there was almost 2,700 visits to the nurses’ office.
Sonday is also working on standardizing care plans for the district. This would mean if there was a kid with diabetes in elementary school, when the student went to middle school the LSN there would be familiar with the child’s care plan and the transition would be more efficient.
Nikole Polk, the LSN at South View Middle School, is also working on creating new procedures for the district. She is currently finishing up her doctorate in nursing at the University of Minnesota, and is working on a project that focuses on creating guidelines for kids who have concussions.
Polk said she noticed a trend of kids with concussions and a variation with doctor’s orders received about what to do. Some orders were focused on academic accommodations, while others barely had any information. She wanted to come up with a standard procedure to help support students with concussions.
“So I developed guidelines on how to approach concussions in Edina public schools and that’s being piloted right now at the two middle schools,” Polk said.
Polk said she has always been the go to person in her family when someone is sick and she loved biology and science classes in school, so she knew early on that she wanted to be a nurse. She thought she would go the surgical route at first, and she has had a little experience in a hospital setting.
“I like taking care of people. I like helping people,” Polk said.
But in the end she decided she really loves working with children, and she has come from a background of educators and was familiar with the school setting.
“I found it fascinating. Plus, I love learning,” Polk said. This is her third year in Edina.
Both Sonday and Polk agree that the day-to-day activities for school nurses are always changing.
Sonday works at the early childhood special education school two days a week. The majority of her time is spent interacting with the students. Many kids at the school wear hearing aids, so throughout the day she will be cleaning hearing aids, checking to make sure they are on the same channel as their teacher and swapping out hearing aids and testing them. There are also students with asthma and diabetes, which require monitoring and counting carbohydrates throughout the day.
“It’s actually kind of rare that I will get a kid that will come in sick here because most of the kids are only here for two and a half hours, so if they are sick they stay home,” Sonday said.
In the afternoon Sonday will be with the kids as they come in, but usually she spends her time developing care plans for kids with specific health needs, creating emergency plans for kids with seizure disorders or severe allergies, and writing evaluations.
Every child receiving special education services needs to have an evaluation and report filed every three years.
Sonday also spends time at Normandale Elementary. Most of her time is spent making care plans, filling out special education evaluations and planning for upcoming field trips, while the Health Service Associate (HAS) takes care of the kids who are sick or coming in with injuries.
Sonday is called if there is an emergency or a medication change, and her office is right across the hall. Because this is Sonday’s first year, she has been working in the health office more because she wants to get to know the kids.
In the time she has leftover, Sonday also works at the non-public elementary schools. Some days she will spend the whole day doing vision and hearing screenings, while other days she will spend half of her time at Our Lady of Grace planning a field trip and the rest of the day she will be at Calvin Christian doing evaluations. She said it all depends on what each school’s needs are that day.
Our Lady of Grace and Calvin Christian are the biggest non-public schools, so they usually require the most amount of time, Sonday said. At the other private schools there isn’t a regular school nurse or HSA, so the secretaries will fill in to give medications and do first aid. If there is an emergency, Sonday can be contacted at any time.
Even in the middle school Polk said she can never really know what the day will bring, and it can be anything from dealing with emergencies to administering medication. She also works a lot with the developmental and cognitive disabled children who need tube feedings and medications three times a day. Kids are coming in and out throughout the day for medications, and some students have diabetes and asthma, so they are constantly giving out medications and checking blood sugar levels. Of course, there are also kids who come in because they are not feeling well.
“So you just never know and it’s nice to be able to help someone and kind of identify that situation,” Polk said.
Sonday and Polk haven’t been at Edina schools for long, but Collen Ziebol has been a school nurse in the district for over 20 years. She came from a hospital background, but said she loves the education environment because it gives her a chance to make a difference in kids’ lives.
Since Ziebol started working as a school nurse one thing that has changed is the use of typewrites. Other changes she has seen over the years is the complexity of student’s needs and the day-to-day routine.
Mary Jo Martin, the president of the School Nurse Organization of Minnesota and the district lead nurse in Hopkins School District, has also been involved in school nursing for 20 years.
SNOM advocates for school health and education to prevent health barriers that prohibit kids from learning, Martin said.
Martin said in her time as a school nurse she has seen a lot more students with chronic health needs, and allergies and asthma is on the rise.
The number of kids who have food allergies has increased by 50 percent from 1997 to 2011 with no answer as to why, according to a 2013 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Also, one in every 13 children under the age of 18 has a food allergy.
And in 2009 one in 10 children had asthma, according to the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology.
In the future, Polk would like to do more assessments on guidelines for concussions and see what the district’s needs are. She thinks having more protocols for concussions could be beneficial to students.
“I do really enjoy school nursing. I enjoy working with the kids’ families and we have a great staff her at South View,” Polk said.
“Most people’s understanding of a school nurse seems is still very much based in the band aids and temperature taking mode, and to see that it is much bigger than that and nurses can actually play a leadership role in a school is exciting for school nurses,” Sonday said.
Reporter Allison Maass is studying Journalism at the University of Minnesota.