Good Morning nurses!
I know that everyone is exceptionally busy with end of the year activities. I wish you all a great
end of the year. The Board has been hard at work as well. We met Saturday in Portland for a special
work session, as there was much to accomplish. We worked on a budget for the organization, reviewed
and updated the bylaws and operating guidelines. We are developing a packet of information to be shared
at the Fall conference related to legislative information that represents School Nursing in Oregon. I
would like to commend the entire BOD for their exceptionally hard work.
We have been involved in a lot of activities to promote School Nursing in Oregon. There will be an
update related to the Task Force at Fall Conference. The report is being written this summer to present
to the legislature in the Fall. The Task Force that was charged to write a position statement on the
care of the diabetic student in Oregon has finished their work. As shared before, the document is posted
on our website www.orschoolrn.org . Some had trouble opening it when first posted but I believe that
problem has been corrected.
We have been asked to participate with the House Education Committee and Rep. Whisnant on the Vision
Screening of Oregon Students Work Group. Carol Cochran will be beginning work with that group later
this week. I am so proud of the incredibly professional and exceptional work that all of the School
Nurses in Oregon are doing. Health Children do Learn Better and you are all working exceptionally hard
for those students.
Carol Cochran will be attending the NASN Conference later this month to accept her National School
Nurse of the Year award. I know that she will join me in saying that this award is representative
of the work that all of us are doing here in Oregon. She is dedicated to using this honor to promote
School Health Services for students and our districts here in Oregon. She and Nina Fekaris, our current
SNY were jointly honored in an article of Today’s OEA and I will be asking Nina and her daughter to
post it on the website.
All of us constitute OSNA, and I am continually in awe of the work you are all accomplishing.
I will be communicating more throughout the summer so please check your emails occasionally.
I look forward to seeing you at the Fall Conference on October 9th and 10th (save the dates) in
the Eugene area. More information will be coming from the Eugene Committee who are working very
hard on this conference. They have an exceptional educational line of speakers for us!! Topics
include Facilitating the School Experience for Childhood Cancer Survivors, (Sue Sumpter RN from
this Doernbecher’s group is presenting at National Conference this summer and is superb!);
Compassionate Communication/ Non-violent Communication; School Nurses Confronting the Childhood
Obesity Epidemic; Concussions/TBI; and last but not least, J “The Scoop on Poop” –Behavioral
Approaches to Encopresis. Don’t you just love being a School Nurse!! J
Carol Zirkle
Hi Oregon Nurses,
I don't know about you, but my weeks just seem to fly past and two tasks seem to replace
every one that gets accomplished! :-) I sincerely want to thank those of you who responded
to my query regarding how the effect of lost MAC monies would impact your districts, students
and families. The information provided was excellent. I put together a 3 page typed summary
of just bulleted items that listed negative impacts of this happening. I did it by geographically
areas of the state. I emailed to first to Janet at the Oregon Center for Public Policy and she
emailed it on ahead to DC. We spoke to Nicole Tapay, the senior health policy aid and Grant Couch
another aid that attends many of the hearings for Senator Wyden. They were most pleased with a
written summary and stated that the Senator could draw from it when he needs to speak at hearings.
This is a gargantuan issue that is being handled politically on the Hill. The Senators are working
with others to include moratoria in the Iraq supplemental bill and/or the Medicare bill. The Senator
hears our voices but there are very strong political battles being waged related to it all. There were
a couple of other positives. I believe one of the most positive outcomes from this is that Janet and
the staff at the Senators office were interested in what it is that School Nurses do and how we
function differently from School Based Health Centers. I had been able to forward to Janet the
"summary of accomplishments" compiled from the 2007 and 2008 SNY nomination packets. It shows
the depth and scope of what is being done daily for Oregon School Children. She was very impressed
and suggested it be forwarded on to Sen. Wyden's and Smith's offices. Secondly, on the NASN
president’s list serve, they had asked for stories to demonstrate impact to children if the MAC
monies are lost. I sent NASN the summary prepared of your shared comments and they appreciated
it very much. Their political voice is louder than ours because it is composed of many more nurses
throughout the US. But, their voice, is our voice. It is the voice For Oregon kids and families
served through your hard work as their school nurses. I will be forwarding the information requested
to the Senators demonstrating the hard work that you all do. We as an OSNA Board will also be
discussing our "voice" at the Board meeting and sharing more at the General Meeting. I wish that
you all could make it to the Conference. It is going to be great. I dearly hope that at least some
of you from every district will be able to attend to take information back to your colleagues.
I want your voices to be a part of and represented on the Board of OSNA. We are going to have some
openings and I hope that you will consider running for office. I will send another email next week
describing the offices that will be opening up. Please consider getting involved in this way. See
you at conference,
Carol Zirkle
April 20th, 2007
These are certainly busy days! I have been very busy with the legislative testimony related to Senate Bill 1040 this week. I tried contacting COSA and OSBA folks and only succeeded in reaching a lobbyist for COSA. I actually sat in my car and cried after speaking to the lobbyist because from the very first time nurses spoke up regarding SB533 (the Asthma Bill) the legislators thought we were engaged in a turf war. We were only interested in maintaining our turf in the schools. I cried that day from having invested until 8pm the night before at the office, and it was 0630, heading back in to do more prep and I was tired and discouraged. I KNOW the amazing wonderful work you are all doing and I know how much you give above and beyond and even more to your students and the districts. I knew that we already had a law in Oregon that allows for self-medication and we just want to make the new law as safe as possible for kids. I was also frustrated, because the laypersons had no idea regarding what is safe and what is not, and yet they are the ones making medical decisions. I got the frustration out with tears and then emotionally stood proud of all of OSNA because we are standing up for safety for kids! The legislative committee expected all to be perfect when SB 1040 came off the presses it was not.
The 3 major concerns were: (in a nut shell)
It defined medication as any RX prescribed for asthma or severe allergy (leaving the door open for self-carrying of corticosteriods, singular etc etc. We are asking that it read: lifesaving rescue bronchodilators and autoinjectable epinephrine. Again abbreviated, one section read, that it was the person designated to give medications in the schools. That would determine in the school setting, whether or not a student was capable and competent to self administer and use the equipment correctly. We know, that by experience, that would be school secretaries or auxiliary staff. We also knew that there was NO WAY they were going to put school nurse (if one) in there. So, I was asking for it to be the person identified by the Administrator. That would at least allow the nurses to do it if they have us in the district. There is screwy wording about the school requesting from the students parent or guardian the medication to be kept for emergency use. (it could have referred to the initial med for the kids pocket it was confusing. We asked that it read that
the school would request that the student's parent/guardian would provide a BACK UP medication to be kept in the office.
I have simplified but the 3 main needs are identified above. We KNEW that it was going to pass through committee NO MATTER WHAT and that is exactly what happened. The committee stated, that we could deal with it on the House side as there was no time for further rewrites before it leaving the Senate. They actually have NO IDEA of the importance of the above changes they think that it is great the way that it is and the lobbyist for COSA echoed that their group had no problem with it and it had also been run through OSBA.
I was contacted by Lindarose Allaway (the respiratory therapist who saved the day with an impromptu medication lecture at the asthma training a couple years ago that was being held at the WESD). Beverly Stewart from ALAO had contacted her to help with verbiage as she used to also be the president of ALAO. There is too much to tell except that she sent me a copy of Public Law 108-377 Oct 2004 that is driving all of this. This is the federal document that states that IF states have laws with certain content that the state ALA organization is eligible for more points towards being given grant monies. I was able to use that document to SHOW the legislative committee that THEY included School Nurses (when available) in the wording as well as BACKUP medications should at least be asked for. I provided each Senator a copy of this document with the words highlighted!
I have been dealing with Beverly Stewart from the ALAO and I believe that we are on the same page regarding the verbiage needed for a safer bill. She was ill and couldn't attend the hearing. Her replacement was very much less interested in collaboration but she is NOT the asthma person. She deals with tobacco issues for ALAO. I am hoping that when Beverly returns to work that we can all sit together and agree that these changes are not related to turf but necessary. There are also a lot of politics involved that would take too long to explain but George the ALAO lobbyist needs to save face and he is not interested in changes. But, as I reminded him, it is ALAO that writes his check and IF we can come to agreement, then he should have to back it with us.we shall see!!! Again, I would like to emphasize that Beverly Stewart from ALAO and I have maintained a good relationship. We want a good collaborative relationship between our two organizations.
I think that gaining collaboration with COSA and OSBA and saturating them with all the good things that school nurses are accomplishing is crucial also. I would like for them to think �oh, school nurse when they have a medically related bill come through or any other issue related to the health and well being of children in school. Do any of you have any contacts or foot in the door ideas for collaboration? I am swamped right now with the SNY, Conference meetings, and legislative stuff but after conference I could concentrate more on collaboration efforts. I have been compiling a bulleted list from all of the SNY nomination packets and hope to distribute them to administrators. You folks are phenomenal and I want to toot your horns. Perhaps I can figure a way to get myself invited to an open part of their meeting just to present this document and greetings from OSNA? Please help me out with ideas! Maybe, just maybe it will get some of them who have school nurses talking with those who don't and they will see what they are missing out on!!!
I have been working to get some media for the SNY announcement and SN Day which is May, 9th. PLEASE, contact your local newspaper and ask them to highlight school nurses (and do a whole expose on school health if they would!) Fiddle de de, I forgot the sample article on my other computer. I will send it via the list serve on Monday. It could be used just as a template for submitting something to your local papers.
I want to THANK all who tried to testify at the Ways and Means Town meetings. Some of you waited for hours and were never called to testify. THANK-YOU for trying. I am sending a letter for all of us. I don't know that it will even be read at this point, but we are trying and keeping School Nurses before them! Mary Lou Patterson in Bend, was our success story as she was at least able to share before the committee!!!
These postings get long but there is so much to share! I want to close with something that is terribly sad but represent WHO we all are. My heart is full and I just want to share it. No dramatic programs or accomplishments are involved, but it touches the heart of who we are and why we all choose to stay in the hardest professional job we have ever experienced. I want to tell you about Anthony. My Anthony is 4 years old. He has Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type II and he is dying. I have served him for 3 years. He is so very bright and smart and delightful in every way. His muscles just will not function anymore. Even after getting a g-tube this year, he still struggles with aspiration and pneumonias. He has such a weak respiratory effort. BUT HE LOVES SCHOOL!!! He comes to our ECSE preschool 2x per week and he just loves it!! His passion is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the moment. He may not have time to actually go to Disneyland which was his families Make A Wish Request for him. Soooo, I decided to make a second wish come true if I could. We are going to have a Ninja party for Anthony at school on Wednesday! Hopefully, he will be well enough to attend. We have acquired an authentic Ninja Turtle costume and a delightful young man to fill it and entertain the class. Roths IGA is donating a KOWABUNGA cake. McDonalds is donating a set of 2 Ninja Turtle figurines for each student and I just picked up a big Ninja Turtle Movie Poster that Regal Cinema is donating! My daughter has been so helpful in coordinating much of this for me. To top it all off, she is studying to be a helicopter pilot and the company she is training with, Silver State Helicopters, is going to take Anthony, Ninja Turtle and his parents up for a flight Wed. afternoon!!!! His mom told me that Anthony, always wanted to be a superhero and FLY!!! Now, I have gone and done it again, and the tears are flowing! THIS is what we are about School Nurses of Oregon. Sometimes it is very clinical, complicated and medical in nature and sometimes it is Pure Heart!!
You are awesome! I hope to see you all on May 3rd and 4th at the Spring Conference in Wilsonville. Please try to attend. Have a great weekend.The Board meeting in June is held in Nashville Tennessee in conjunction with the annual conference. Each time we meet as a Board we have one full day to work on specific Task Forces and one full day for the Board meeting. In January when we meet our schedule also includes Leadership training and time on Capitol Hill to meet with our Legislators. More...