Organizing for The School Nurse

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Hopefully Helpful School Nurse Tip: Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork- the life of a school nurse does include a lot of paperwork! Keep your papers organized will save you time in the future!

School Nurses- Let's get organized!

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I enjoy a healthy level of organization. Over the years, I've learned it is easier for me to be organized at work than it is in my personal life- imagine that :)

Here are a few tools I use at work to help me stay organized... I would love to hear what you use to stay organized and one step ahead of the game!

1. A file, paper, chart alphabetizer organizer!

All of our papers are organized by last name in this handy device until there is time to file them.

If you had two of these you could use one for every day filing and the other to help organize forms for the most recent project you are working on- these days probably physical exam and shot records. This product is available in a "left handed" version too!

2. Clear, plastic bankers boxes!

These are great for a variety of projects.

I've used cardboard boxes for years, but honestly once I switched to plastic bankers boxes I would not go back to cardboard. These boxes are very versatile! We use them a lot at the beginning of the year to sort the charts of incoming students into different piles.

We label our boxes too... usually titles like "up-to-date. OK to file", "NEED physical and/or shot records", "Review before filing"... You get it :)

At the end of the year we put the school health folders of the graduating class in these containers too for their 60 year storage journey. There are just over 1,000 students at my school and we use at least 5 of these per graduating class.

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Link To Introduction Post- Ten Things to Think About for the NEW SCHOOL NURSE

3. Index Cards!

It may sound old-school, but we still chart on these white index cards! We use one per student until they graduate.. Some students cards fill up quickly and others will never have anything but their ID sticker on them! We use at least 600 cards per year :) As of the writing of this blog post (2018), we only use the electronic charting system for certain things such as student immunization records, physical examination dates, and medication inventory and administration. However, in 2020-ish we started using Skyward to chart basic office visit information as a more accurate way to collect data! It works great :)

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.... STUDENT HEALTH CHARTS ....

4. Labels...

We put a student label on the upper left corner of the index cards mentioned above and also on every student health folder (listed below) that includes:

student last name, first name
DOB
Graduation Year
ID #

We print two sets of labels each year for the incoming freshman class- one for their "card" and one for their "school health chart".

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5. Student Health Charts-

Every student has their own chart as I mentioned above. Only the incoming freshman will have nicely printed labels; transfer students and new students will have hand written information. Depending on the school year we usually need 300-500 of these!

We keep the most current and required school physical exam and immunizations in the front the each chart (for easy access). Then, we add doctor notes, dental forms, vision exams, etc behind the physical exam forms; usually organized by date too.