NJ School Nurses Now Wear Contact Tracing, Health Department Hats

NEW JERSEY — On any given day in pre-pandemic times, a school nurse's office would be the one-stop shop for students to pick up an ice pack for a bump on the playground, to rest with a headache or where a student would go if they felt feverish.

Having a fever these days, in COVID times immediately sets into motion a whole other set of procedures when a school nurse then needs to put on their other figurative hat, which one nurse called the “de facto health department" one, according to a report from NJ Spotlight News.

Robin Cogan, a champion for school nurses working particularly with Camden preschools and founder of the Relentless School Nurse blog, lamented to the publication that school nurses are now the “de facto health department, on top of what is already a very challenging role.”

Not only are there the usual checks for symptomatology for particular conditions, should a child walk through the door complaining of a certain issue that a nurse is responsible for categorizing and quickly assessing, a school nurse’s administrative role has deepened to the one Cogan has compared to a self-standing health official.

It’s now a school nurse’s duty to be a COVID contact tracing resource, she says, whether they’re on the front lines of detecting the first signs of a possible COVID case or if a parent calls in that they’re exploring COVID as a possibility for their child's symptoms.

Contact tracing involves assessing with whom students or staff spend their time with in and out of school, which can be a mammoth task to begin pulling back all of the layers of each child's or staff member's life. In response, Hamilton Township Superintendent of Schools Dr. Scott Rocco reported to NJ Spotlight News that he hired two “floating” school nurses to work as support staff to his district’s school nurses. Rocco complimented his nurses, stating “we’ve asked a heavy lift of them.”

Lumberton’s Superintendent Joe Langowski agreed, telling The Philadelphia Inquirer that school nurses “have gone above and beyond,” his district also hiring two substitute nurses to help bear the load, he said to the Inquirer.

One of his school nurses, Kathy Barbieri of Bobby’s Run Elementary School, reported that the school recently wrestled with 33 potential COVID cases that necessitated quarantines among the student body, as well as two students who were COVID-positive.

According to the Inquirer, each school district in the Garden State needs one “certified nurse in every district,” with about 2,700 currently staffed in the state’s public schools.

Donna Sichta, a New Jersey school nurse in South Brunswick’s Indian Fields Elementary donned yet another hat this past week, as NJ.com guest columnist.

Sichta described the experience for school nurses to readers this past Thursday, explaining that their role requires an additional two years of schooling, which verses them to work with a bevy of student health situations, from nebulizers to seizures to working with special needs children.

In addition to the challenges that nurses now face as that de facto health officer in the schools, New Jersey’s children are “socially behind by 1.5 years, having missed in-person class settings for more than a year,” Sichta said; and first graders especially have a learning curve for basic tasks from staying masked throughout a school day to taking a bus to school.

She asked for parents to be patient with these factors woven, along with what school nurses have traditionally been asked to do. She reminded readers that COVID procedures are mandated by New Jersey’s Department of Health in battling it, whether suspected or positive cases.

Another hat that a school nurse often wears, she says, is being on that front line when outraged parents learn that they are being instructed to quarantine, along with their child.

“When we call a parent to take a child home, it’s to keep the school a safe environment for everyone in the building,” Sichta wrote. “This is difficult and we hate making the call.”

To help bridge the gap at the state level, New Jersey's Department of Education now staffs a State School Nurse Consultant to act as a liaison with the Department of Health and the school districts' nurses, a role that Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law in Sept. 2020, according to the New Jersey School Boards Association. As of Aug. 11, the position is open on the state's website.

In spite of that extra weight school nurses now carry with their added duties, the AP reported this past Thursday that nursing schools such as the University of Michigan’s, have counted a rise in entry-level applicants for the institution’s 150 seats, from 1,200 in 2019 to 1,800 in 2021.

Read more here from NJ Spotlight News, here with The Philadelphia Inquirer, from NJ.com here and from the AP here.

Editor's Note: This article has been updated to provide more background about the State Nurse Consultant position.

Questions or comments about this story? Have a news tip? Contact me at: jennifer.miller@patch.com.