The average school has more than 500 students. For a school nurse, that’s 500 potential patients.
While they don’t see most students every day, they are the first responder for all of them if an emergency happens.
Thanks to several members of the Pediatric Pandemic Network (PPN), school nurses now have access to an easy-to-use emergency preparedness guide. The School Nurse and Health Aide Emergency Preparedness Toolkit includes information templates, discussion points and exercises for school staff, emergency management vocabulary, and more curated resources.
It all started with an email to Abby Bailey, Norton Children’s pediatric disaster preparedness senior program coordinator. Bailey, a hub site manager for PPN, works closely with the Kentucky Department of Public Health and was asked if PPN had any training videos or other resources for school nurses on basic emergency management training.
“I realized that we didn’t really have that, and other resources I found were overwhelming,” Bailey said. “We needed something intro-level, actionable, and easy to digest. It seemed like there was an opportunity to create that using what was already out there.”
Bailey leaned on the expertise of three colleagues to create a thorough guide: Brigitte French, hub site manager at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital; Beth Lamkin, RN, hub site manager at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital; and Chris McCarthy, PPN drills and domain manager.
French has a strong background in emergency management and knew making the guidance approachable and actionable would be key to making it useful. McCarthy is an expert in emergency drill planning and included practical drills that school nurses and staff can learn from.
“Emergency management can be really intimidating if you’re not regularly involved in it,” French said. “The beauty of this toolkit is that it’s digestible. We broke it down into bite-sized pieces — key elements you need during a disaster, acronyms incident commanders use so you know how to communicate with them, and short drills to practice.”
The toolkit also considers the needs of children with medical complexities, Lamkin’s area of expertise. It prompts users to think through the medical, mobility, and communication needs of these students before an emergency occurs.
The toolkit is designed to be useful for anyone, no matter their experience level or prior knowledge. Its 23 pages (including checklists and appendices) give users enough information to inform but not overwhelm them and can be read beginning to end or used in sections.
“I looked at a lot of resources out there, but nothing seemed as succinct or useable as what we wanted,” Bailey said. “We didn’t want to send something out that someone would read and go, ‘Now what?’ We wanted to give them something they could do, things that would truly help them in an emergency.”
The toolkit spotlights quick-but-impactful wins like updating contact lists and evacuation plans, creating processes for students with medical complexities, and completing five-minute huddles to think through emergency scenarios.
“Full-scale exercises can take a year to plan, and writing an emergency operations plan can take months,” French said. “People may give up or become frustrated if they have one enormous task. But these small tasks motivate you and keep you interested.”
They also designed the toolkit with several entry points: Schools new to these processes can create emergency procedures or test their existing processes with practice drills and scenarios highlighted in the guide.
“It’s set up intentionally to be welcoming no matter where you’re at,” Bailey said. “Our goal is to give every school nurse the confidence to know what to do in any type of emergency.”
