We’re All Happy and Healthy

An Overview on Maclay’s School Nurses

Photo by Aubrey Whitaker / Maclay Andalusian

It doesn’t matter whether you  played too hard in P.E., scraped your knee on the playground or simply had a bad headache- everyone at Maclay has had the joy of meeting the school nurses. Tucked away in their own building near the upper school, the nurses are welcoming to everyone on campus. 

There are five nurses at Maclay: Jill Hope, Juliana Schneider, Megan Snow, Meghan Whitaker and Rita Wisotsky. Having been at Maclay for three years, Snow is the Director of Health Services and serves as a full-time registered nurse (RN). Hope and Whitaker are both part-time RNs, and have been Maclay school nurses for one and five years respectively. Schneider and Wisotsky are part-time nursing assistants. Schneider has been at Maclay for 12 years, and Wisotsky has been here for two years. 

What the nurses take care of varies from day to day; some days, they handle a few students with minor injuries, while other days, they see up to 60 kids a day with diseases such as the flu. Not only do the nurses have fluctuating amounts of students each day, they also deal with a large range of ailments from these students. 

“We do have themes of the day,” Snow said. “A lot of times we have a nosebleed theme for some reason, where we’re seeing a bunch of nosebleeds, or a headache theme, where we’re seeing lots of headaches.”

Each time a student comes in, the clinic has to write a note on them. These notes consist of what the student came in for, what they were given and general information on the student. This year, the system the clinic uses to take notes was switched over from FACTS to Veracross through Magnus. 

“As the teachers all get moved over to Veracross, it’s a lot easier for me to share information that teachers need to know,” Snow said. 

The clinic staff shares something beyond a typical colleague relationship; they are all good friends. In fact, staff members have stated it is their coworkers that make workdays feel less taxing.

“We are a great team here,” Schneider said. “We are awesome [at] teamwork. We cover each other, we understand each other, we complete each other.”

Not only does the group function well as friends, but they are also exceptional when working as a team.

“We work so well together, because we all have our different strengths and weaknesses,” Snow said. “...We’re very respectful; we have great communication to the point where we feel like we can freely speak our minds and concerns, and not have a poor relationship with each other.”

The nurses also have great relationships with both the students and teachers at Maclay. Notably, the clinic is frequently visited by students who check in and converse with the nurses.

“I like when the teenagers come in here and chitchat with us,” Hope said. 

Despite mainly functioning in their own building, the nurses frequently venture around campus. They check for expired AEDs, they meet up with students who take medications regularly, they walk students who are going home to their car and they restock feminine products in the upper school. 

Outside of the stereotypical icepacks and bandages, the clinic offers a wide variety of medications to help relieve students. They provide Advil, Tylenol, TUMS, cough drops, Benadryl, Claritin, Zyrtec, eye drops, prescriptions and Epipens for students with allergies. Additionally, this is the second year the clinic is hosting CPR training for upper school, which opens up in the spring.

Throughout even the most overwhelming workdays, the nurses work to create a safe space for everyone on campus, ensuring they feel comfortable while being cared for. 

“We try to validate feelings for the little ones [students], and then for the big ones, we try to give them the space that they need in here,” Snow said. “Some kids open up and talk, some kids don’t, so we just allow them the space to do that if they want to do that.” 

The clinic staff tries to match the needs of each kid, ultimately hoping that students feel better leaving than they do going in. 

“The little nuggets come in crying because they fell and they hurt their knee, then you can make it feel better and they leave skipping,” Snow said. “That's a good feeling.”

While the clinic staff is happy to help each student, it still makes them sad to see students in pain. 

“[Our]  least favorite thing to deal with is when a small child comes in crying, that hurts,” Hope said. “Even if they’re not overly hurt, they are emotionally. [That] hurts me emotionally.”

Overall, the clinic is a safe, supportive place for everyone on campus, and it’s home to compassionate nurses. While they are hardworking, the nurses still make time to welcome each person that steps into the clinic, and the Maclay faculty wouldn’t be complete without them.