The Relentless School Nurse: Meeting the Moment
As this new year begins, I’ve been thinking less about whether school nurses will stay or leave, and more about how we respond to the conditions we are already in. School nursing is not practiced in a neutral landscape. The work is shaped by underinvestment, politicized public health decisions, widening student needs, and a long-standing…
The Relentless School Nurse: After the Pause
Returning in January, after the pause, often feels less like easing back in the pool and more like jumping directly in the deep end—no warm-up, no shallow water, no gradual reentry. The systems we stepped away from did not rest. The conditions did not improve. The needs did not shrink. What changes is not the…
A New Year, A New Shift: Starting the Year Strong as a Nurse
The New Year doesn’t always arrive with confetti and quiet mornings for Nurses. It often shows up mid-shift, with a full assignment, a blinking call light, and coffee that’s already gone cold. And that’s okay. For Nurses, a new year isn’t about perfection, it’s about intention, resilience, and finding small ways to care for ourselves […]
The Relentless School Nurse: Grandparents For Vaccines is a Public Health Win!
Grandparents For Vaccines (GFV) has been named one of the new public health coalitions “standing up for science,” by Katelyn Jetelina, author of Your Local Epidemiologist. That recognition comes in the middle of the worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years, a moment when clear, trusted, pro-vaccine voices are not optional. They are…
Nursing Tip of the Day! – Critical Care Nursing
Category: Critical Care Nursing Intestinal obstruction often presents with acute, diffuse, crampy abdominal pain coupled with nausea and vomiting, obstipation, distention and tenderness. Obstruction can be partial or complete and can involve the small or large intestine.
Nursing Tip of the Day! – Critical Care Nursing
Category: Critical Care Nursing Usually, ileus is characterized clinically by hypoactive or absent bowel sounds, abdominal distention and delayed passage of stool and gas, but the process may involve nausea, vomiting and abdominal tenderness.
Nursing Tip of the Day! – Critical Care Nursing
Category: Critical Care Nursing In the postoperative surgical intensive care unit, evidence of postoperative ileus ranges from 24% to 75%. Ileus can affect the entire gastrointestinal tract or just a segment, from the proximal gut, to the small bowel, to the colon.
Nursing Tip of the Day! – Critical Care Nursing
Category: Critical Care Nursing Acute colonic pseudo-obstruction (Ogilvie syndrome) characteristically has significant dilation of the cecum and right colon without any anatomic obstruction. There is a strong association with opiate administration.
The Relentless School Nurse: Chief Wellness Officer by Intention — What Leadership Looks Like Now
This is part of a series that examines what it means to practice school nursing in a time when public health is under strain, prevention is being politicized, and the complexity of school health—and the responsibility long carried by school nurses—continues to intensify. In earlier pieces in this series, I wrote about how storytelling became…
The Relentless School Nurse: 2026 – This Is What School Nursing Needs From You
Note About This Series Over the past years, The Relentless School Nurse has become a place where stories are told plainly—about what school nurses see, carry, and navigate inside systems that often overlook their role. Those stories were never meant to stand alone. They were meant to help us see patterns, name harm, and build…