The Relentless School Nurse: Pandexit (n) – the Final Phase of a Pandemic

On March 18, 2020, my school district closed down for what was supposed to be a two-week pause. We were instructed to bring home enough work to keep us busy until March 30th. More than 12 months passed before we actually returned to our school buildings. The calendar blotter sitting on my desk, frozen in time from March 2020, reminded me that incredulously a year had passed. 

This past week, we began to welcome back our students in real life. The first few days I felt a little rusty and disconnected. I scrambled to regain my footing for in-person school nursing. I was quickly back in the saddle, especially when one of my littles was brought to my office covered in spiked seed pods from a tree in the play yard. Finally, something non-COVID related to snap me back into action. 

COVID-19 reared its complicated and ugly head, even in the first few days of school reopening. Not all staff are vaccinated and we are still in the midst of a pandemic, so it is not a surprise to have positive cases find their way into school buildings. We have planned, revised our plans, and revised our revised plans during this year of virtual school nursing. But still, each scenario challenges us to be sure we are thinking about possible exposures from all angles. 

School nurses are tasked with keeping students and school staff safe from an invisible invader. We have few tools, minimal support, and can be the target of tremendous pushback when having conversations with parents whose child may have had an exposure at school or who show possible symptoms. I have written extensively about school nurses who report that this school year has broken them, even though they once loved their work. In the twice-weekly support groups I host for school nurses across the country, we often talk about the challenges we are facing.  Group members caution colleagues in distress to not make important career decisions based on this difficult year of service.

Stepping back into life is like taking a cold shower, a bit shocking, but refreshing too. The first time I left the confines of my home and drove to one of my schools, I actually got lost in the city that I have worked for twenty years. I pulled over, took a breath, and gave myself a pep talk. I was feeling overwhelmed by the weight of the responsibilities that were ahead of me. Knowing that so many colleagues had successfully returned to school buoyed my wavering confidence. I took an inventory of all of the stories that have been shared and I prepared myself to step back into life knowing that I was not as alone as I was feeling. 

While I was in the midst of writing this blog post, my dear friend and brilliant colleague, Barbara Glickstein asked if I had heard about “Pandexit.” Always eager to learn, I quickly googled the new term and was not surprised to find that this term was coined by the genius minds behind “Dear Pandemic”: 

This information was retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/dearpandemic/