By Scottie Brown

The Selma Times-Journal

 

Nurses from the Selma and Dallas County school systems will take part in a training session at Children’s Hospital of Alabama in Birmingham Wednesday.

The session, which is a partnership between the Alabama Department of Education, Alabama Board of Nursing and Children’s of Alabama, works to keep nurses informed of the skills needed to care for students within their school systems, such as the use of asthma inhalers or even giving insulin shots to students with diabetes.

Ginger Parsons, the parent educator with the Patient Health and Safety Information Department at Children’s of Alabama and the program head, said the skills the nurses will be learning compare to situations they could encounter at any point in a school year.

“We have a simulation center where the mannequins can go through seizures or go through a diabetic event,” Parsons said. “They can practice and just role play, so that if those situations were to happen in their schools, they know how to manage that.”

The hands-on experience the nurses will get during the program also helps to alleviate some of the stress a nurse can feel dealing with those types of situations, Parsons said.

“It’s very beneficial to have a hands-on practice at our skills tables here,” Parsons said. “Learning theories say that the level of anxiety is a lot lower when you’ve had a hand-on simulation practice before you care for a patient or a student with a special skills need.”

Parson said that the nurses aren’t the only ones learning when it comes to the training sessions. Each school system has their own sets of rules and regulations that nurses must follow when dealing with a student.

“We get enriched from them because they know how to care for that kid in the school system,” Parsons said. “So, when we marry both of it together we have the best care that we can.”

The training sessions are not the only time a nurse can brush up on their skills.

“If I can’t get that topic covered in the summer program, once a month I pick another topic and we do webinars,” Parsons said. “Everything is taped. Even the summer conferences will be taped. They can go look at these skills any time they want to. They won’t get the hour credit content, but they can look at it for knowledge.”

While the idea of going through real-life situations can seem stressful to some, Parsons said that isn’t the case for these nurses.

“They’re just hungry for the knowledge,” Parsons said. “It’s fun, and we have a good time. They have a really good time doing it.”