COVID 19: What to know before sending kids back to school?

covid-19 resources

  Children have been learning online for over a year now! Remodeling students’ habits to adapt to online learning has proven to be a complex process for educators, students, and parents.   Students are starting to return to the brick-and-mortar school setting.  But not all parents are rushing to send their kids back to school. This is because schools and parents are equally concerned about the following factors:    Whether the number of cases in the area low enough for the schools to reopen.  The school’s support of mask use, regular fumigation, and physical distancing.  Setting up hand washing stations and hand sanitizer availability throughout the school  The availability of a proper Electronic Health Record for school to ensure efficient COVID 19 tracking.  A proper school nurse health system to support school nurses to contact trace, test, and quarantine students/teachers who have been exposed to the virus.  A recent online survey conducted on 1000 respondents in the United States yielded the following result:    So should your ward go to school and risk infection or should they stay home?   Which brings to the important question of factors to think about while deciding to send children to school.       Questions to answer before sending children to school  There is no such thing as zero risks in the things we do, especially during an epidemic. There is no ‘one size fits all’ answers for questions to be considered before sending children back to school. However, the following set of selected questions can guide parents and schools as to whether or not their ward should be sent to school:   Would sending your child to school affect their mental health?  Surprisingly despite the apprehensions, sending kids back to school is predicted to have a positive impact on students’ mental health. Students are longing to socially interact with their friends and this is essential for their mental wellness. Perhaps children feel they’re stuck in the home environment with no one else to interact with. Therefore, if your kids’ mental health is bothering you, then consider sending them back to school.  Will your children fall behind if you choose to keep them at home?  Don’t worry about it! The whole world is going through similar chaotic situations. Before the classes resume, the authorities will change the class programs to ensure that everyone is on the same page. This is a surety that your kids will be ready to leap ahead no matter what.  Is a classroom setting going to improve your child’s learning?  On reopening, schools will impose a dozen protocols. This might not make returning to school pleasant for students. Some educators are even skeptical about whether classroom settings would be the best option for your child’s learning, while some others remarked that in-person learning is good for students even during these days.  The opinion of having in-person learning by certain educators has been proven right by a recent survey. The survey showed that the majority of the students were feeling ‘bored’ and ‘unmotivated’ by online classes. However, on asking about returning to the class setting, students had mixed but mostly positive reactions. So, whether classroom setting can improve child’s learning is purely parents’ call.      How to prepare your kids mentally after school recommences?   Parents are trying to prepare their kids for school reopening and speculate the challenges they would face. For those who are concerned about how to prepare their kids mentally after school recommences, here are some recommendations:    Plan in advance  Instill confidence in your kids through planning as a family. Educate your kids regarding what to expect at school, and the precautionary measures they should take. If there are higher-risk family members, tell your child the extra caution they should exercise.   Incidents of slip-ups like a mask falling off/falling on the ground, forgetting to wash/sanitize hands are expected. Such mistakes can trigger anxiety in kids. Prep them in advance- give extra masks, sanitizers, and wipes- so that worries won’t take over their coherent thought processes.  Discuss anxieties  Talk to your children about their emotions like: What are their fears? What are they most excited about? Boost confidence in your kids, give them space to synthesize their rational thoughts, and most importantly ask them not to hold anything in, but share what is on their mind with family. Make sure that there’s a dedicated space in your family to freely communicate your kids’ feelings.  Anticipate stresses  Kids are going back to school after a big transition and kids might be anxious about getting sick. Make them practice positive thoughts and talk to themselves with confidence. Make your kids practice breathing exercises if they encounter panic attacks at school. When parents are not around, such stress-busting practices are going to instill a lot of confidence in kids.  Ensure mental health  Kids and teens have high rates of anxiety caused by the pandemic. These periods of isolation have affected their mental health. Parents should proactively check their children’s mental well-being. Watch out for signs like sleeping difficulties, mood swings, self-isolation, lack of motivation, and safety concerns. Reassure that what your child is feeling is a normal reaction to what has been going around. When you feel that your kids need therapy or counseling, do not hesitate to consult a therapist or counselor.  Don’t expect overnight changes  Did your kids’ grades drop during the pandemic or have a non-existent social life? Expect such things not to change overnight. It takes time to fit in back to the school and societal settings. Set realistic outlooks and it will surely take some time for parents and kids to get into the new groove.  Stay flexible and consistent  Parents and students should be ready to face any adverse events that might lead the schools to closure again. Schools might continually change their protocols, so be ready to roll with the punches. Stay positive to change and mentally flexible because it will take time for everything to fall back in place.   Parents should stay on top of what is happening at school and communicate with school nurses to see their kids getting the best medical support. As for school nurses, their schedules are going to be hectic once the kids are back to school. This difficulty in managing their activities can be managed by Electronic Health Records for schools like EduHealth.     What schools can do on resuming?  Schools have lots of medical data to process especially when kids are returning to school amidst a global pandemic. School nurses have lots of student tracking to do to ensure that the children are kept safe from getting infected. A school nurse health system with a COVID 19 tracking dashboard can reduce the burden on school nurses during this phase.   While parents and students take all the precautions before school reopens, school authorities also have equal responsibilities in…

Effective strategies for school nurses to deal with stress banner

Effective strategies for school nurses to deal with stress

School nursing

  School nurses like you play a key role in student healthcare management and it often has you juggling multiple priorities to meet growing workplace expectations. This can put you under a lot of undue stress, directly impacting your everyday activities.   In a research study, 48.5% of school nurses reported medication errors, with missed doses at 79.7% being the most common category of error. A contributing factor could be the responsibility for a large number of students, which in itself can be a reason for stress in school nurses.   This article looks into factors causing stress in school nurses, how technology can help and, the importance of having a school nurse health system in schools.    What are the reasons for stress in school nurses?  School nurses help students in managing factors affecting their physical and mental health, and often, ignore your own health in the process.  At educational institutions, school nurses have:  1. Growing administrative workloads   2. Responsibility of caring for more children than they can     These are school nurses’ challenges put broadly. Let’s look at them in a little bit of detail:    Major Administrative workloads  Collecting health forms and taking care of the data, managing immunization compliances, school health report creation, timely medication administration, emergency care of students and staff are some of the many activities that school nurses manage every day.   Using paper-based processes to manage these activities is not just time-consuming, but involves significant effort from you, putting you under a lot of stress.     Responsibility for more children  NASN recommends 1 school nurse for 750 perfectly healthy students and the ratio becomes 1:225 for students who need daily professional nursing services.   However, today most school nurses work for more children than they can care for, resulting in their growing anxiety.  There are other stress factors that come as part of the job, affecting their performance and overall quality of student care.     Putting school nurses at ease  To avoid such adverse situations that school nurses face, you can use a system like EduHealth. EduHealth is an all in one school health management software solution.  School nurses can avoid anxiety to great extent with the help of school nurse health systems. An efficient school heath management software like EduHealth includes functions that simplify the management of the following student data like:  Digital records of students’ health history with allergy information, information on previous medical ailments and comprehensive medical records  Electronic immunizations records, medical prescriptions, and related health records Authorization letters from doctors and parent’s notes    Doctor visit records  And the system can even help you with medication reminders so you never miss another dose of your student’s medication.  School nurses can access all records with a click of a button. And you can even generate detailed reports, taking away a whole lot of effort you’d previously put into searching for right information on paper documents.   And the benefits don’t end here.   This way, EduHealth helps you stay in control of your tasks, give students the care they deserve and ensure medication safety without stressing you out.     What is the importance of a school health management software?  An efficient school health management software is a must-have for educational institutions. Schools should adopt technology solutions that are capable of enabling school nurses and ensure delivery of quality medical care for the students at the school. EduHealth’s user-friendly dashboard clearly lists the school nurse’s tasks for the day, and facilitates an environment for school nurses to perform their tasks quickly and free of errors.   Without proper health management software, school nurses will run into problems like:  Reduced productivity  Poor mental and physical health   Dissatisfaction at work    How can health management software support school nurses overcome such problems?   For starters, it helps you in creating daily routines and keeps you focussed on your duties. School health management software can assure:  Improved collaboration with different participants in the student health framework  Quick creation and retrieval of students’ medical file  Prompt feedback mechanism  Technology awareness among school nurses    Conclusion:  Technological innovations have simplified jobs for many – including school nurses. School health management software systems have made access to important health documents so much easier, enabling the efficient delivery of care.  With a strong support environment, powered by electronic health record system EduHealth, school nurses are in a better position to meet growing and changing healthcare expectations and are not under undue stress of administrative workloads.     

EHR Adoption Rate Statistics

Softwares

  Team EduHealth recently surveyed school nurses to understand the latest EHR (Electronic Health Record) adoption trends in schools and school districts. The statistical report is based on a survey we conducted, which finds what in an EHR are school nurses and administrators looking for and which features in the system improved its adoption rates in the school and school districts. We’ve also covered important statistics on the other key decision-making factors in EHR adoption. The respondents of the survey are school nurses from schools and school districts in sMid-West, South-East and North-East America.   Background  Until very recently, school nurses used paper records to manage student health. The traditional methods of paper-based health record management were proving to be tedious and an administrative burden on already overworked school nurses. If a student came to the nurse’s room with an emergency health condition, the school nurse would have to open up hundreds of documents to learn more about the student’s pre-existing health conditions, allergies and the right medication. There also was the glaring disproportion of school nurses with students, which made things harder. In this context, health record software that electronically recorded student medical records were seen as a practical alternative to make school nurses’ jobs a tad bit easier. But as COVID 19 began its onslaught, electronic health record systems – whose capabilities then predominantly included medication tracking and immunization tracking had to be pivoted to include COVID 19 tracking and the ability to track student health remotely. COVID 19 also prompted several schools to quickly adopt an electronic health record system to meet the changes presented by the “new normal.” Today, though most schools have a system to track health records, expectations around what can be achieved with these systems have changed. But, there is no denying that EHR systems for schools have revolutionized student care by making it easy for school nurses to track and stay on top of student health without being riddled with loads of administrative tasks. And as EHR adoption rates grow, we aim to understand how school nurses use EHR systems and the critical features in an EHR system used most by school nurses and administrators to manage student health documents as well as the objective they hope to fulfill with EHR systems. The EHR statistics results are based on the information given to us by over 100 school nurses. Key takeaways of the survey    91% school nurses use some form electronic system to manage health records in their schools 30% schools do not have a COVID 19 tracking and contact tracing system in place Immunization tracking and charting capabilities in an electronic health record are very important to school nurses User friendliness is an important electronic health record adoption feature, with 86% of respondents replying in the positive Reporting capabilities is also a major priority, with 86% responding as very important Most school nurses want their student electronic health record systems to be HIPAA and FERPA compliant     EHR systems in a school environment  “EHR systems in a school setting have the capability to manage data and share it with members of the health care team outside the school setting can serve to optimize coordination of care.” NASN Schools have adopted EHR to simplify the management of important health information and make it easily accessible. In our survey, we asked the respondents if they used EHR systems. And 91% of the respondents said they use electronic health record systems in their schools. EHRs are essential to simplify the management of student health and medication needs. Electronic health record (EHR) is an electronic version of a patient’s medical history maintained over time. It includes all the critical administrative clinical data relevant to the person, including medications, problems, immunizations, other health notes, and so on. EHR systems automate information and have the potential to streamline their user’s workflow. However, from our survey, we gathered that 9% of survey respondents still rely on traditional methods, including paper forms or excel sheets, to manage student health record management.   What do 91% of school nurses expect from an EHR system? Though the EHR statistics says that 91% of school nurses have adopted an EHR platform, there are a significant number of users who are not happy with what the platform offers. As the complexity of health reports changes, school nurses and administrators need a system that can adapt to changing expectations. So, what are they looking for in an EHR system? Let’s find out. EHRs must be simple   User friendly interfaces When asked about the user friendliness of EHR systems, 86% of respondents in the EHR survey said the feature was a “very important” one. When school nurses use an electronic health record system, they expect ease of use, which takes only a reasonable amount of time to learn. EHR usability is defined by the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which specific users can achieve a particular set of tasks for a specific environment. Poor educational EHR usability leads to school nurses’ burn-out, increased medication errors, and student safety issues.   Health record and form digitization capabilities 73% of EHR survey respondents say that health record and paper form digitization capabilities “on-the-go” is a crucial priority. Though EHR systems store information digitally, the process of entering data remains largely manual. The data entry process involves several hours’ worth of effort. School nurses usually manage multiple health-related administrative tasks in the school, and one among them is updating students’ health records. While they earlier resorted to documenting them on paper records, the system was not reliable because human error loomed largely. Modern EHR systems leverage several technologies to help the school nurse community overcome this challenge. But sometimes, these systems make it difficult for school nurses to capture and store data in the right locations. The bulk scanner on EduHealth focuses on helping school nurses overcome this critical challenge. It scans the relevant information from health forms and saves it in the system. This way, it saves several administrative work hours and ensures all the data is stored in the right format, making data reporting- and audit-ready anytime.   Data transferability and uniformity The right data is very critical to arrive at the right conclusions. But transferring data from an existing system to another one is a challenge. First, all the data would be siloed and secondly, they’d be stored in multiple formats – some digital and some in paper. In this scenario, it can be difficult to transfer data to a system, let alone make sense of it. 62% of EHR survey respondents consider ease of transferring data a “very important” aspect…