Monday

The COVID-19 pandemic left a lasting impact on school nurses—and they continue to face ongoing challenges. Often alone on the frontlines in schools and communities, they assumed new responsibilities, heroically coping with community tensions and finding themselves excluded from school health decision-making, adding to their burden. But this presentation is not about the pandemic; it is about now. These lingering stressors increase the risk of burnout, empathic distress, and moral injury. As sole practitioners, school nurses may experience isolation, making peer support essential. There is no question that well-being is at stake. How does one preserve and enhance their well-being amid workplace upheaval? How can we reconnect with the passion that brought us to the profession? How do we make our work meaningful, find value, and become valued? This presentation will bring a unique perspective to individual and collective well-being that extends far beyond more traditional approaches to “self-care.” Evidence-based strategies and practices will focus on self-compassion, stress management, mindfulness, and unique practices for alleviating stress through nature and respite and joy through the arts and creativity. Instead of focusing on treating mental health ‘conditions,’ this presentation will build positive resources that foster well-being. Positive Psychological Interventions are evidence-based methods beyond just alleviating symptoms—they boost well-being. Participants will learn how these approaches can promote positive emotions, thoughts, and behaviors for a more fulfilling life. Attendees will take home a toolbox of strategies and chapters from Courageous Well-Being for Nurses.

With the opportunity to interact with a variety of students, school staff, and administration on a regular basis, school nurses are uniquely situated to make a difference at schools sites by engaging in anti-racist, trauma-informed care. Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools (HEARTS) is a whole school change model to create trauma-informed, safe, supportive, and equitable school cultures and climates that promote school success and resilience for all in the school community. Trauma-impacted organizations, like individuals, can become fragmented, reactive, numbed, and rigid (Bloom, 2013), making them trauma-inducing to staff and to those served. Implicit biases and institutionalized oppressions (e.g., racism, sexism, homophobia) can engender trauma, and thus mitigating these harms is central to trauma-informed work. Dr. Martha Merchant will present principle-driven strategies, grounded in implementation science, for facilitating more trauma-informed nursing in schools.