By Hafizah Ahmad-Bennett, RN, CSN
I am a recently retired school nurse who worked for the Newark Board of Education in Newark, New Jersey for 28 years. Most of my career was spent in Secondary Education (High School).
The last couple of years in my career were very challenging because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having worked in Health Care for over 30 years, I never experienced the level of pressure and stress caused by the global pandemic.
We, as school nurses were over-worked and overwhelmed.
Until my last year, I loved being a School Nurse. In fact, I honestly believe I would not have retired had it not been for the duties and responsibilities that were required because of COVID-19.
The school nurse shortage has always existed, but presently it is at an all-time high.
My school district protocols were guided by the local Health Department which closely followed the recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As a result of the uncertainty, district policies and guidelines were constantly changing and we were not able to put some of the protocols in writing.
This made it difficult to communicate the length of quarantine times, which were determined by the date of exposure or the date of positive result and whether a person was vaccinated or not.
We were handling situations on a case-by-case basis and at times we were unable to give concrete information to the staff or our parents.
Our teachers felt unsafe and we were unable to allow the transparency our families were accustomed to. At one point it became almost impossible to keep up with the daily COVID cases and the lengths of times for quarantining.
As the School Nurse, it was my responsibility to keep abreast of all positive COVID cases in our school and to communicate with parents as well as coordinate with teachers and guidance counselors for students to get their class assignments while they were home quarantining because of exposure to someone with COVID or students that were themselves positive
There were some students home experiencing symptoms while some were just home with no symptoms. Therefore, teachers were expected to provide classroom work via Google classroom.
Sports and athletics created more problems for the school nurse. In a couple of instances because of positive cases the entire Girls’ volleyball team and the entire Boys’ basketball team had to be sent out for COVID tests and then quarantined.
As a result, the game schedules were impacted, and many students had to be absent from school, which caused more anxiety and uncertainty. These instances were followed by interactions with angry parents and upset coaches.
The school nurse received the backlash as a result because she was the one designated to communicate the situation to the families and the Office of Health Services.
We, as school nurses are responsible for keeping students safe. In addition to performing our regular duties, we had to take on an enormous amount of COVID related responsibilities.
We were overwhelmed and quickly burning out. We were responsible for things such as: contact tracing, pool testing, identifying positive cases, alerting families, assisting outside COVID testing agencies with weekly COVID testing in the schools, and many other COVID related duties.
All these extra COVID-related responsibilities left little time to get our regular work done. This left many of us very frustrated and dissatisfied with our roles.
My school district implemented Ingress/Egress Protocols upon entering any school, consisting of 4-Step Ingress Procedures:
Step 1: Symptoms Screening (questionnaire given upon entering the building), for staff an app could be downloaded on your cellular phone, or the paper form could be used);
Step 2: Temperature Check;
Step 3: Footwear Sanitizing; and,
Step 4: Hand Washing/Sanitizing.
We followed the CDC guidelines for protection against COVID 19:
- Wear a mask
- Practice social distancing. Remain 3 feet away or more from other people
- Frequently wash hands for at least one minute
- Stay home if you have a fever of 100.4 or higher
- If you take a COVID 19 test, you must stay home until you have negative results in hand. Report positive results to the Office of Health Services.
COVID-19 created many challenges for everyone.
Overall, we all did our best, as a result of having to quickly put together COVID-19 policies on quarantines, masks, and other safety practices. It impacted all our daily lives, but we did it!
Hafizah Ahmad-Bennett, RN, CSN is enjoying life as a retiree after almost 30 years as a school nurse in Newark, NJ. A wife, mother and grandmother, she graduated from East Orange High School and North Carolina Central University.
