School Nurse

About the role

Hamilton County Schools, located in Chattanooga, TN, is working to ensure that all students thrive and experience a future without limits. We are committed to excellence for every student and are seeking outstanding leaders, teachers, support staff, and district employees who desire to make a difference in the lives of students. With nearly 75 schools, we are confident that you can find your place in Hamilton County. Learn more about working for Hamilton County Schools at careers.hcde.org and get to know us and our strategic plan, Opportunity 2030. The purpose of this job is to serve in a lead capacity in the promotion of health care and provision of medical assistance to students/staff of county schools.

Responsibilities

• Acts in a professional, respectful, and welcoming manner at all times.
• Creates a customer-focused climate and provides quality services and support to school and other stakeholders.
• Complies with applicable district, state, and federal codes, laws, rules, regulations, standards, policies and procedures.
• Enhances the education process by maximizing the health and well-being of school-aged children and adolescents, with focus on prevention of illness/disability and early detection/correction of health problems.
• Provides direction, guidance, training and assistance to employees; troubleshoots and works to resolve problem situations; responds to employee problems/concerns.
• Dispenses approved and/or prescribed medications appropriately to students.
• Maintains appropriate medical records regarding all dispensation of medication.
• Develops and implements protocols and procedures for responding to student illness and injuries, including special intervention for occurrences of acute illness, severe injury, emotional disturbance, and communicable diseases: recommends modification of school programs to meet the health needs of the general and special populations; and assists in the continual evaluation of program effectiveness.
• Ensures compliance with established school health guidelines, safety and infection control procedures, and all other applicable laws, rules, regulations, standards, practices, policies and procedures; initiates any actions necessary to correct deviations or violations; follows safety procedures, utilizes safety equipment, and monitors work environment to ensure safety of students, employees, and other individuals.
• Provides routine and emergency medical care to students within the prescribed boundaries of training, certification, and applicable policies and procedures.
• Promotes and protects the optimal health status of students; works with well children and children with acute chronic illnesses, injuries, handicapping conditions, and developmental disabilities. Works with students to promote wellness.
• Observes students for developmental and health patterns during routine assessments and provides an initial diagnosis; identifies adverse health findings; interprets the health status of students to parents and school personnel; initiates referrals to parents, school personnel, and community health resources for intervention, remediation, and follow-through.
• Assists in the control of communicable diseases through audits of immunization records, early detection, surveillance, reporting of contagious diseases to appropriate persons/agencies, and proper disinfection. Coordinates referrals to outside health services.
• Participates directly and indirectly in health education for improvement of health by teaching persons to become more assertive health consumers and assume greater responsibility for their own health.
• Provides ongoing health counseling to students, parents, and school personnel; maintains, evaluates, and interprets cumulative health data to accommodate individual needs of students; participates