I hope you are all staying warm and safe with your families. As most of you are in Colorado right now, I am currently up in North Dakota spending a few weeks with my daughter, Tessa. And yes it is frigid cold up here also. As the small town of Grand Forks is currently shut down related to blizzard conditions, I am taking this solitary time to prepare for the upcoming director board meeting in Washington DC.
My board member's packet began with Kate King's president's address to the board members. As I read the introduction, I was ecstatic to read Kate King sharing her favorite nurse theorist. Over the past few years of my nursing career, I have become more enthralled with studying the nurse theorists and how vital their ideas and theories are to school nursing practice. While Kate shared her favorite nurse theorist as Rosemarie Parse with her theory of being and becoming centered around meaning, rhythmicity, and transcendence. My favorite nurse theorist is Jean Watson and her theory of human caring. Watson's theory focuses on a holistic approach where care is the core of nursing and includes interpersonal attempts to enhance and maintain health, humanity, and well-being. In this theory, health can be achieved through care based on compassion, dignity, love, attention, and authentic presence.
School nurses have come a long way over the past few years experiencing fatigue and bullying, questioning their usefulness in their practice. However, we have continued to demonstrate compassion for our student population providing evidence based nursing practice combined with our traditional based nursing practice focused health care while simultaneously increasing our role in social and emotional care of the student.
In two weeks, I will be meeting with Colorado Senators and Representatives sharing legislative priorities. The One School, One Nurse Act as well as the Nurses for Under-Resourced Schools Everywhere Act (NURSE) Act, would allow professional nurses to provide the support that so many students need. I will be utilizing the concepts of our nurse theorists to present to the legislatures on how the two acts would decrease health equity and improve the health of Colorado children.
Let's be proud of our professional role as school nurses and strategize together how we can make the public aware of who we are and what we can do to support the student not only in maintaining health, but also in their well-being. Consider writing a letter to the local press or your Colorado legislature of something you have accomplished as a school nurse for school children and the importance of our role.
If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward." – Martin Luther King Jr.
Namaste
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Laura Phillips, MPH, BSN, RN NCSN
Colorado Association of School Nurses
NASN Director
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