What’s the Stitch with the Health Office ?

A students health plays a big role in their education. This is why all students have the right to a school nurse and health office. TPAA is no exception to that.

Recently, I had the opportunity to talk to our school nurse, Mrs. Maryanne. It was the chance to get a better understanding of how a school’s health office worked.

To start off grasping the work that gets put into running a health office, there needs to be an understanding of the amount of students that require help. On a daily, the health office can see up to “40 to 50 students that have issues and around 30 more students who come in for boxes of tissues” stated Mrs. Maryanne.

Students frequently go to the nurse’s office for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest issues being that students come in for fevers. Those students are normally sent home but they aren’t the only ones.

Being sent home “just depends on how sick a student appears.” Mrs. Maryanne “looks at the whole student and then decides. If they’re throwing up, have diarrhea, or if they have a serious injury,” like a broken bone or a bump on their head, they will get sent home.

However, there is also the case of when to go to the nurse. “Some kids think anything but you should come up if you’re bleeding, vomiting, if you have diarrhea, or if you can’t stop coughing.” Don’t worry though, you can even come up “if you just need a break.”

Work done by the nurse requires her to constantly multitask on busy days. She also has to keep in mind all the attention to detail there is within her work.