During the pandemic, school nurses were asked to continue to do their regular jobs while also taking on new responsibilities.
Brenda Lindahl, the nurse administrator of Auburn City Schools, serving grades K-12, plays an active role in handling COVID-19 issues that arise, on top of normal responsibilities such as managing allergies and distributing medications.
Loretta Cofield, lead nurse of Lee County Schools said she never imagined living in a world that would go through a pandemic.
“We’ve done things that we never thought we’d have to,” said Cofield, who's been a nurse for 22 years.
All three school districts staff an in-school nurse at each building — several of the Auburn City Schools have two, and the school district hired a full-time nurse who floats between campuses — which was the case before the pandemic.
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Now school nurses in Alabama follow a whole new set of protocols recommended in the Back to School Toolkit published by the Alabama Department of Public Health.
“When we put the isolation rooms in, we talked about it later: ‘Why hadn’t we thought about this before?’” Cofield said.
Kim Martin, lead nurse of Opelika City Schools, calls the toolkit “the path forward”; Cofield says the nurses know it “backwards and forwards”; and Lindahl reiterates the importance of following the guidelines.
“It took the whole community to make this whole school year happen,” Martin said. “We talk about what the school system did, but we also had to do that with the cooperation of the parents, the teachers, local physicians worked with us and guided us, our board.”
Community stakeholders pitched in too, Cofield says. Lee County Emergency Management Agency and the state helped Lee County Schools “scrounge around” this summer for equipment and supplies, but now “you can just about get what you need.” Auburn City Schools and Opelika City Schools received similar support from community members, they say.
Nurses are also still caring for children with non-pandemic health care problems, such as for allergic or anaphylactic students.
Eighteen years ago, Martin said, there was one student with diabetes in Opelika Middle Schools, and now that number has “multiplied,” representing an increased workload for school nurses.
“Those issues have not disappeared,” Martin said. “What we’ve done is added a pandemic to already existing health conditions and health concerns.”
School nurses also provide solutions to challenges facing students and faculty during the pandemic, from isolation to grief to stress, that have added to their task load.
“Teachers and school nurses have the challenge of reaching out to students who may have health concerns and are at home learning remotely, such as providing emotional support for them,” Lindahl said. “Our school system has done a tremendous job in reaching out to our families to ensure they have the technology needed in their home for students to learn remotely.”
Auburn City Schools also makes contact with guardians to ensure that they have food to meet their families’ nutritional needs, and has provided many free meals to families during the Pandemic.
School nurses battled infections before the times of COVID-19, and now, as the three communities almost complete a school year during a pandemic, school nurses again remain positioned to be the first to spot and stop the spread of COVID-19.
“I thought the kids would be awful wearing masks – they’re not,” Cofield said, sharing a story of a Loachapoka kindergartener whose cat-eared hat matched her cat-faced mask. “The kids have done a really good job, and there’s no fight about the masks like you would think there would be.”
“They're little champs,” Cofield added.
School nurses have also been staying in close contact with families by phone, Lindahl said. They have to — school nurses are the first to contact guardians if a student needs to be quarantined or shows COVID-19-symptoms.
“To have parents that understand when I call and ask their child to quarantine that they understand what I’m asking and know it’s for the good of the students and the rest of the school, and to be able to go to my principal and if I need anything at all, they get it for me,” Martin said. “That I can pick up the phone and call the pediatric clinic in Auburn and say, ‘Talk to me about suspected positives and how to handle them’ – it’s been a collaboration from start to finish, truthfully. And we’re not finished yet – we’re close, fingers crossed.”
“We had plenty to do before, and we’re kind of looking forward to getting back to normal,” Cofield said. “The normal emergencies.”