How important is health education in schools? Well, the nurses at Cedar College feel it is extremely important not only for students, but also for the staff we work with and care for.
So, you can imagine our excitement when, during one of our SASNA meetings last year, Liz Rankin, a nurse from Tyndale Christian School, showed us her school’s ‘health on a page’ portal for staff. And boy did the wheels start turning!
At first the two of us working in the nursing team at Cedar College talked through how our school could have something like this from which our staff could draw practical and trustworthy information. What did we want from it? How would it work? How would we make it accessible to staff? After much consideration and with all the page ideas from Tyndale in our possession, we went to our business manager and asked permission for us to begin. The proposal was warmly received.
With permission granted, the next thought was, ‘how do we do this?’ Our IT team gave us a link on the staff portal and guided us as to how to plug the information in. Then it was the hard work to sieve through the information for evidence based and relevant information to put on our new page.
Our finished product (see picture) has many staff training modules with areas in anaphylaxis, asthma, diabetes, epilepsy and other first aid for teachers and staff to access. We also included many informative medical issues for their own reading, including dental emergencies, heart attack signs, suspected drug use and many, many more. Our final thought was to add a ‘You’ve got What?’ section, sharing signs and images of common diseases, to help differentiate symptoms of common issues seen at school.
This is a labour of love and is a work in progress, as we find more and more information to share, but the response has been so encouraging since we launched. It is a such handy one stop shop for referring staff when they have queries, that we look forward to seeing what else we can add to it. All from an inspiration from a SASNA meeting, demonstrating what can be achieved when we meet and share ideas together.
Lorelei Sparks RN & Simone Thomson RN (Cedar College)
