Today is Thursday May 9th, our fourth day of class/events on our trip. After an early breakfast we made our way down to the hotel doors at 8:30 and left on our walk to Birmingham City University. We arrived after 15 minutes to the Seacole building which is home to the HELS programs (health, education, and life science). After we walked in most of us went to grab a coffee at the little coffee shop that our new friend Gemma works at! We got to say a quick hi and then were shown to a new classroom where we sat for our first lecture of the day.
For our first lecture we got to hear from a school nurse which can’t be confused with the United States version of a school nurse. In the United Kingdom the school nurses don’t stay in the school like nurses in America do. Instead, they work from random community centers in their towns/cities that they live and or work in.
In the United Kingdom these school nurses do much more than nurses in the United States. Their services are free to student due to the NHS, and they work to make themselves accessible to every and all students. The students can schedule to see their nurses in person or over the phone, something that hadn’t been put in place until covid hot and everyone had to learn how to quickly adapt to what was going on. Schools here keep a person who is qualified to do first aid for the children but not a fully qualified nurse on their schools’ campus.
Here the school nurses place a large emphasis on the healthy and non-healthy behaviors that their patients may be exposed to and inform them why these are right or wrong to continue. Due to the global pandemic and how it delayed many students at this point and time many kids see their school nurse until they are into their 20s, which is different as they used to only stay with them until they were 19. Unlike in the United States of America the school nurses use a wholistic approach to tend to their patients. They get assigned a certain number of schools and are tasked with taking care of all of them. It is believed that in order for a child to thrive they must have all basic needs covered. School nurses play a role in lots of social events that must happen to protect their students in a poorer area. They aid in baby drives, food drives and as many social outreach events in the community as possible. Also, they offer up resources that the children might not be able to get or find on their own. These nurses can set kids up with dentist that can be hard to find, provide unforms for school aged children and so much more.
While this is different from what happens in the US, I don’t necessarily think it’s a better or worse system. I liked having a real registered nurse in my school because she was a great resource for all of us. We were all able to store prescribed medicine in her office with the help of a doctor’s note, she could come on field trips with us, and when people got more severely injured or sick which unfortunately seemed to happen quite a bit she knew exactly what to do as she was trained as an RN and had to go through grad school to become a school nurse. On the other hand, the UK version of a school nurse is much more beneficial to the community and can do way more to help shape the children’s overall life. They can provide charitable services to children who live in poverty stricken areas. These special types of services are rare and hard to come by in the United States and I think that if they could find a way to implement them into the country on the state or individual district level that would be super beneficial. Similar to how it is in Birmingham and the general England population, poverty and living crises are becoming more and more prominent. They will damage children and their ability to grow up into strong and capable young adults.
I loved getting to hear about this difference in the nursing culture. After working in hospitals for years in the back of my mind I’ve been thinking about working in a school before I retire. Hearing how different the jobs are across the countries blew my mind a bit. As much as I’m sure the job would be really cool, I love the freedom I get from being a nurse in the United States instead of being pigeon holed into a certain sector of the job like nurses here are. I can’t wait to go to the gardens and get lots of fun pictures tomorrow!
