School nurses find new resources at Regional School Nurse Workshop

School district nurses support students from the moment they enter the school system in kindergarten until they graduate from high school. They become familiar with their students and the ways to assist with different types of problems. To learn the most recent ways to handle delicate and difficult situations, they can attend conferences.

To help school nurses assist their students, Southeast Missouri State University's Office of Addictions held the Regional School Nurse Workshop. This is the fourth school nurse workshop that has been held since 2016 at Southeast. Fifty school nurses, 31 Southeast Missouri State University nursing students and 12 SEMO faculty members attended the event. All 13 regions of Southeast Missouri had a school nurse in attendance.

The conference was broken down into two sessions. One was held in the morning in the UC Ballroom, covering responses to trauma, a pharmacology update, and how to recognize and care for school-age students with a family history of substance use. The afternoon session was held in Crisp Hall and had a rotation of skill sessions. The sessions included anaphylaxis management, concussion management, emergency orthopedic assessment and sucicide assessment.

Assistant professor of nursing Corrie Dudley was a speaker at the conference covering the response to trauma session.

“These are common things that school nurses see. Being able to kind of talk to somebody who’s [in] their given field and [see] what they would recommend they do if they’re in a rural area [is helpful to professionals],” Dudley said. “Because in some of these schools, it could be 30 minutes if they call an ambulance before the ambulance gets to them.”

Nurses in attendance had the optional training for Narcan administration led by Aaron Bales and Whitney Sanford from the Gibson Center for Behavioral Change, a recovery facility in Southeast Missouri.

Many who attended the conference stayed for Narcan administration training.

“Clearly felt the need within our community that they wanted to feel that they had that training,” Dudley said. “Now that they have trained, [they can] go and potentially train people within their districts.”

This conference was sponsored by the Office of Addictions and was free to the school nurses. Funding came from endowed money to the Department of Nursing from Margaret Woods Allen.

For more information about the SEMO nursing program, visit their website.