And we're live!

And we're live!

What started out as a postgraduate university assignment has come full circle as this site goes live! Less than 6 months ago, several School Nurses across New Zealand agreed to be formally interviewed as part of a university research project. A few common themes emerged from the transcripts...

 

School Nurses work exceptionally hard.

They love working with Young People.

They often work in less than ideal conditions. And they persevere.

 

They also face many challenges. As health professionals, Registered Nurses working in New Zealand Secondary Schools often work in isolation, resulting in limited access to and/or knowledge of existing SBHS resources, infrequent contact with other Youth Health Professionals, and limited access to and/or knowledge of Professional Development Training relevant for Nurses working in schools. 

An online survey of currently employed school nurses across New Zealand indicated that a centralised online 'information port' (website) would prove extremely useful to mitigate some of these challenges:

‘The website sounds great. School nurses have lots of knowledge and experience that they are willing to share but we don’t have easy accessibility to this.’
‘Great idea - hope it goes ahead!’
‘I think what you may be proposing to be quite exciting and so useful’
‘Great idea. Really hope this all happens. It is quite isolating being the only nurse and help is just an email away from another nurse, but having this all in one place would be amazing’
‘I think such a resource would be fantastic- we do work in isolation and time constraints mean we have little time to connect in person’
‘Sounds like the ideas being asked about are sound in principle. Should a central web site one stop shop be developed along with a register of school based nurses at a very reasonable cost supported by both the MOH and MOE, this would be very well utilised.’
‘I work for xxxxx in an alternative education facility and also provide clinical oversight - school nurses definitely need a collective organisation and some standardised resources.’
 

With the newly-elected Labour Led Government planning to employ a school nurse in every school in the country, this feels like an opportune time to collate existing resources, and provide that information and knowledge in an accessible centralised location for School Nurses to refer to, in order to best support the health and wellbeing of our Taiohi. 

We are extremely grateful to the McCutchan Trust who have generously funded the development of this project for 2018.

So grab a coffee, take a moment and browse through our content. Let us know what is helpful. Let us know what else could be helpful. And send us what you've got! Together, we'll be able to make a big difference. :)