I am typing 35,000 feet in the air flying home to Philadelphia from Denver where the 51st National Association of School Nurses (NASN) annual conference just concluded. Two years ago, at our conference, I wrote my first blog as the Relentless School Nurse. This year, I was privileged to provide a breakout session entitled: Amplify the Voice of School Nursing Through Blogging and Social Media. Much has happened over the past two years that enabled me to bring my experience to share with other school nurses who are eager to begin their own blogging journey. We worked on an exercise in the session where I encouraged the attendees to write a “What Happened at School Today” mini-blog post. The engagement was inspiring, as school nurses began to commit memories and reflections to paper in a first attempt at writing their blog post.
As I said in the session, there is room for everyone’s voice because we all have a unique perspective and the more of us that write, speak, blog, Tweet, the more the community at large will understand our role. We have to be the ones to define our work. When we remain silent, or worse, in the shadows, we do our students, school community and ourselves a grave disservice. I spoke about working to the full scope of our power. The power of the voice of school nursing is just beginning to be realized. Join me on this journey to write our stories, to share them with colleagues, to say them out loud. We have a treasure trove of experiences to curate. Remember the old nursing adage, “If it’s not written, it did not happen.” Let’s not lose the unique lens that is school nursing practice.
For those who did take the breakout session, please send me your posts. I am happy and honored to post them on the Relentless School Nurse. This is what I ask you to provide to me:
- Your story of “What Happened at School Today”, it can be up to 500 words, less is more sometimes.
- A brief professional bio
- A picture of you!
- A brief description of your school community, including workload, number of buildings you cover, grades served and whether it is urban, suburban or rural.
I will never post anything without sharing it with you first. Please feel free to send your contribution to my email: relentlessschoolnurse@gmail.com.
For those, who were not able to attend, but want to contribute your story, please do! I am honored to host your reflections about the challenges and opportunities of being a school nurse.
A very big hug and shout out to Margaret Cellucci, former NASN Communication Director for skyping in with us even though she has moved into a new position and is no longer with NASN. Margaret added her public relations and media expertise to our discussion and I am grateful for her friendship and guidance.
