Caring for kids

Caring for kids

BuolNurse Crystal Vanover assists a student at Beatrice High School. Vanover works part time alongside Nurse Jennifer Buol to care for as many as 100 students per day.The nurse's office at Beatrice High School …

Caring for kids

Buol

Nurse Crystal Vanover assists a student at Beatrice High School. Vanover works part time alongside Nurse Jennifer Buol to care for as many as 100 students per day.

The nurse's office at Beatrice High School sees 75-100 students per day.

With an average of about 100 student appointments per day, Beatrice High School Nurse Jennifer Buol keeps busyâ€"very busy.

As the only full-time nurse at the high school, Buol is in charge of dealing with a wide range of student needs, including administering medication, providing care for diabetic students, assisting with tube feedings, as well as dealing with injuries or illnesses.

Despit e the incredible amount of time and hard work that school nursing requires, Buol said she felt called to it.

“I’ve always had the desire to take care of people,” she said. “This works for me.”

Buol, who has been working as the high school nurse for the past eight years, is one of five school nurses that care for students in Beatrice. Crystal Vanover assists Buol part time at the high school, while Jen Zimmerman serves as the nurse at Beatrice Middle School and Max Gowen cares for students at Paddock Lane. Shannon Kleveland is the district RN and travels between elementary schools in Beatrice.

Though they typically work alone, Beatrice’s school nurses help support one other and assist wherever they’re needed, Buol said. While she greatly enjoys her work, she said the job can sometimes put an emotional strain on her as well.

“The self harm, self mutilation (and) suicidal ideation is one of th e hardest things I deal with,” she said. “When I can’t bandage or treat the pain because the pain is insideâ€"those are the things that tax on me the most. Those feelings of self worthlessness, the self harm, the self mutilation, I would say, each and every time, is the hardest. Each one. Those are the wounds I can’t treat. Those are the ones I can’t fix with a Band Aid or with a medication.”

Buol said that keeping students healthy and happy requires a joint effort from other members of the community.

“We work best if we’re able to work as a team: the student, the family, the staff, the administration,” Buol said. “Sometimes fostering those relationships out in the community can be difficult.”

Yet forging connections is what Buol, Zimmerman and Gowen said they love most about their work. Getting to know current students, while staying in contact with previous ones, is rewarding, they said.< /p>

“My favorite part of my job is interacting with the students and staff on a daily basis,” Zimmerman said in an email.

One aspect of nursing that Kleveland noted people often don’t understand is just how much the role has changed in recent years.

“The image of the school nurse of yesteryear often makes it difficult for the community to understand what it is the modern school nurse is truly responsible for every single day,” Kleveland said in an email. “School nurses are fully-licensed nurses and we dedicate a lot of time to continued education so that we can be at our best for ‘our’ kids and, by extension, our community.”

This article originally ran on beatricedailysun.com.

Sumber: Google News | Warta 24 Buol