Putnam Schools Partner With Tech Nursing

Tech nursing students preparing to assist the Putnam School System’s nursing team as part of a recurring program.

School System Nursing Coordinator Janet Frank said some seventy-six nursing students will help conduct annual health screenings measuring student vision, hearing, blood pressure, height, and weight. Frank said it is important to expose the nursing students to this line of work because school nursing is often an overlooked portion of the field.

“When we have to do screenings, it takes the nurses out of the clinics and then students are not able to be seen as timely,” Frank said. “So when the Tech students come it just frees up the nurse and gets the screenings done, which is a state requirement.”

Frank said they also have several students who will gain clinical experience by spending five to seven school days with a school nurse during the semester. She said the program provides both groups of students with valuable experience that they can use to qualify for nursing work in the future.

“I’ve actually had some of the students that have been with us for the clinicals have applied for the as-needed positions and, when we have them, some of the open school or CDC SPED nurse positions,” Frank said.

Frank said the experience gained there would also transfer well to working in a pediatrician’s office or a larger hospital with pediatric services.

Frank said students in their penultimate semester help with the screenings and students in their final semester get to work hands-on with the nurses. Frank said the program had to change some during the pandemic but outside of that it has stayed consistent over the years.

“It fluctuates whether we have ten to seventy Tech students coming in a year, but we’ve used them steadily for the same things,” Frank said.