welcome to city connections we're glad that you joined us today and may we have a really special duo with us they are those representatives for the school nursing program we have jane bore from highland hospital and jennifer yoder who is the school nurse at jefferson elementary school nursing program is something that maybe not a lot of us know about so we thought it would be great if we could get a little insight into what's going on in helping children with help in this community so i'm wondering if you guys could just give us a little information about who you are help what you do my name is jane bore and i've been a nurse for over thirty years my background is pediatrics and emergency room and i've been a school nurse or in volved in the school nurse program for about thirteen years now i mean and it's the program three quarters of my time and a quarter of my time i spend in the school yet right and you are jennifer yes i am i have been with the hospital for twelve years i worked on the third far which is women and children and this is just my second year as a school nurse working with jefferson and i'm also in west do you guys know how did this old system start i can probably speak to that it started in the mid ninety's actually with the partnership between longfellow elementary which is no longer in the hospital and it was so a mentoring program there were volunteers from the hospital that mentored or tutored students at longfellow and the principal there at that time said you know we really also could use a nurse in our school and so some talks began between the hospital in the school and out of that a pilot program was started in one nine hundred ninety nine with the school nurse at longfellow elementary and vendor altie elementary at that time ok so they picked those schools kind of close to the hospital they did you know ok and how many children were involved in that and how many nurses about that time it was one nurse and later about six months later added a healthy and there were about twelve hundred students we think at that time ok so that was then nineteen nineteen and this is now how many schools are we  in we're in twenty five school buildings five school districts we have seven ahrens in three health aides and we service a little more than twelve thousand students now twelve hou or you're right in there over ad jefferson and what's it like in the school there's office it's very funny and today is very different from the next day we see kids for a wide range of you know things we help manage a lot of chronic illnesses as far as asthma and diabetes and life threatening allergies so that takes a large part of our time but then we see things for cough and cold especially this time to fit different season the should say but yeah it's very fun it's very rewarding to see improvement older and how they take care of themselves yeah i bet you have kind of a special bond with the children because you're not a teacher with grading  yeah we do develop a special bond with kids that are that come in on a regular basis every day especially with their chronic illnesses and so they get to be comfortable with us to get to be comfortable with them and then they're able to to feel confident talking with us about different issues i magine that this program is way more valuable for some students and we would even expect rights like this is maybe one of the only health professionals that they see in a day would that be true it can be we try to network in to get those students to advocate for those students to get them into health care to get them a medical home a big part of our job is doing stuff like that so even if medication we help with obtaining eyeglasses for kids that are struggling and then other resources hearing and finding a physician and any other specific need that they may have so that's awesome that you can help children before they end up too far in the system and nobody caught those kind of thing a societal it's very rewarding and that thing yeah so how do the the administration respond to this program the administration of the schools it's been found through research that at a time saving thing for principals administrators teachers and secretaries we have the medical background so they're not trying to you know step out of their education circle they're allowing us we're allowed we are able to speak to the nature of health care and help them make decisions you know students you know well being sure and probably if you weren't there the children would get sick and then go to the office right track yet and then the administrator has to check on a sick child as well as all the other things that they have to do and they may not feel as though their medical expertise is quite up to the level of yours right absolutely jennifer mentioned the research and that's true that it saves it said research says that it saves administrator sixty minutes a day to have a school nurse in their building it saves the secretary forty five minutes a day and it saves the teacher about twenty minutes in her day to have a school nurse in the building absolutely and i would think it it helps the health of all the children if somebody is ill to be able to go get some help or be sent home i guess if they're sick enough right and in the assessment he says a big piece so if a student comes to see jen in the health room she has the skills to assess them and they're not always sick enough to go home but when they go to a secretary there's no assessment piece and so the student goes home in the us loses that day of learning and right could be the queasy stomach from the test we didn't want to take anyway and i think we've all been there yeah that's good so i take full professionalism to sort that out and how both parents have of a feel about this program they're very supportive and i know with several of our chronic illness children with diabetes or asthma they'll say to us you know i can go to work comfortable and confident that my student my child is being cared for at school and i'm not worried about them and i can go and do my job and not be sick for my job all's yeah and with that  legislation or unit allergies have you done something with that jennifer we have each building instead have a set number of individuals that are trained in recognition of w if lactic reaction is and how to administer that happen afrin and so before school started any minute ongoing during the school year when you education training with whoever has been picked by the school to lead that and i'm sure that makes all the teachers relax as well because i have to take a running start just to say that word and it just comes right out if you have got it you're so used to it right there it's awesome and i'm sure that makes everybody feel more secure because you have a problem like that and you you know you have seconds and you want people that can handle it well so this is such an amazing program with so few nurses  that's put into it right so does this come from employees then out of the hospital but there are several different sources actually holland hospital lawyers do do a campaign every year and they've raised seventy thousand dollars for school seeing the school also doesn't employ we have outside donors from the community that feel strongly about our program and donate we have a school nurse run that we started two years ago yeah that's a great idea so that's a very community involved event and the kids come out and they run the five k or walk it all the proceeds for that go to school nursing and that's always in october i saw so if people are interested in participating in that where they would go for that information fund development office would have that information here at the hospital ok or you could probably go to your island hospital dot org site correct isom in october great and i'm sure you would probably take donations throughout the year i know that school teachers also donate to a final because they seen a huge value of this for students so there's that opportunity here also just to claim donating as you care th very right there's always been we welcome any donations so when people think about school nursing sometimes they may have a little bit of a simplistic view of what that is what kind of issues does a school nurse deal with and he's probably not there's at least fifteen to eighteen percent is what the research says of children in our schools with chronic illness being diabetes asthma life threatening allergies seizure disorders mental health illness the school  involved in all those cases she writes care plans for the school for each of those students she advocates for the fit between the family the school in the physician in those student cases overseas medication and ministrations in the schools which is a lot so there's a whole lot more to her day than than seeing the students that walk through the door with yeah and it's the kind of the front lines to define whether you have a really serious issue a medium issue or it's not so bad right it's those assessments skills that really we love our school staff and they're good at what they do but that's their job is not to assess the illness of a or the health of a student and that's really what we're there for  we want those kids healthy we want them in school who want them learning and and it's just best for everybody that way yeah well that is awesome and i'm sure you know it takes a lot of community helpers to encourage children and help them grow and keep them healthy and to keep parents aware of what's going on and sometimes parents are involved in so many things that it's hard to even notice when your child is not feeling as good as you thought they were so it's so helpful to have that safety net in the schools and to have your dedicated staff that is such a wonderful gift to the community and we're so grateful for all your leadership over the years jane in making this work and scheduling everybody and working out with the schools very professional and sometimes probably serious when there's a difficult problem but it's also can be kind of fun and i know that there's a little video that some students made and because they are very grateful for the student nursing program to you have to show that  it's just really sweet to see the world through the eyes of a child lives on that and i'm very special that they have a way to say thank you and i know you don't do it for thank you but it certainly feels good to see the enthusiasm of those children and the appreciation that they haven't been able is thing a little tribute to their school nurse their very sweet and i think the best present to us are gratification for us is that they want to be healthy and they want to be in school and and they're doing what they can or we so appreciate all that you guys have done and are doing for the community and for future generations with out here in this area holding us all aware of how we have to take care of ourselves i'm sure you do presentations in the classroom to to help kids with and washing out of the void disease which is is awesome very healthy so thank you so much for taking time to meet with us today and we're really glad that  can join us for this segment of city connections that we could learn about the school nursing program in the highland area and if you'd like to see some other programs that we've taped over the years you can go to them i'm forward slash city of highland and check out all those shows we're really glad to have you a part o