Schoolnurse’s Weblog

    The School Nurses have a staff meeting every September where the Director of Health Services, Dr. Adrienne Weiss, goes over changes in policy and department goals for the year.  In her Powerpoint presentation, she stated one of her objectives was for the Nurses to become more comfortable using technology to make our administrative work more efficient and to collaborate.  She offered to send us to classes or get individual instruction from the Technology dept.  It is understood that I will be available to my colleagues for tutoring and troubleshooting.  As the department’s geek I am always helping my fellow Nurses how to make life easier through the use of the computer.  

     When I first started working for Health Services in New Rochelle, our records and letters were hand written.  Even our forms were filled out by hand.  I am basically a lazy person, and I could not see wasting my time by writing the same 3 sentences on the charts of 300 new students each year.  I figured out a way to get Word to print those 3 sentences exactly on the pre-printed lines of our medical records cards.  I then got software from Caere called Omniform.  It lets you create or just fill in forms on the computer.  I am fortunate that my boss is supportive of my efforts.  

     In her department orientation presentation this year, my boss showed clip art of a computer that she customized with text of my motto, “Technology is Your Friend”.   The other Nurses in my office have decided to embrace that idea.  Instead of having me do all the streamlining on the computer, they want to learn how I use data bases, spreadsheets, and mail merging to make our work more efficient.   After showing my co-worker how to filter information on our kindergarten students out of the schools database, it was very gratifying to hear her say, “Technology really is your friend”.

  My school was unexpectedly closed for the entire Summer due to construction issues.  That left me with no time to get my allergy/asthma/medical alert lists together for distribution the first week of school. In order to keep track of health problems, I use Microsoft Access. It was hard to learn, but worth the effort. I tried Excel, but when other people went to filter and sort information, the columns became misaligned.  It took me weeks to redo. I find that the information in Access is harder to accidentally screw up or delete.  I took a course at BOCES that was helpful in learning both of these programs.  Because I keep my database updated and accurate, I was able to quickly update the grades of the children in the medical alert table in access, and distribute the information to administrators and staff. In this case technology was not just a friend but a lifesaver.