What Inspired Me To Be A School Nurse?

So yeah, those options for you if you want to go into School Nursing, you can work as a School Nurse or a School Staff Nurse.

Doesn't really matter to be honest.

Getting experience also, if you want to shadow, try asking if you can shadow a School Nursing team, just for a day or even part of the day, just to see what it is that we actually do.

Because I think a lot of people have this perception that School Nursing is boring.

School Nursing is for like the older people who are of almost retirement age, because it's easy.

I can guarantee you, it's not boring.

It's not easy and I'm definitely not of retirement age.

What To Include On Your Personal Statement

A personal statement is basically a way for you to showcase yourself.

You're selling yourself to recruiters, why they should basically pick you and from a recruitment view, where I've been fortunate to be part of before.

I can tell you that a personal statement is what it is that we're gonna be reading to see that if you're suitable for the team, if you're suitable for the job, if you're suitable for the service.

It's all about putting all your experiences down and also linking it to the role that it is that you're applying for, wherever it fits for example.

Preparing For A School Nurse Interview

Prepping for an interview, for me, how I prep for interview is I always read the job spec and person spec.

And I always think of scenarios that they may ask and write down possible answers in preparation, I have a list of common interview questions that I will always ask in terms of example, tell me your understanding about the role of the School Nurse

Or you can insert whatever job title it is that you're going for, or I another common one, is tell me how you deal with conflict within the team, or tell me how you would escalate a safeguarding concern, or if you saw somebody not working towards practice standards, what would you do?

Those kinds of questions always tend to come up.

So I always write down a list of common questions that come up and then always prep the answers beforehand.

There are also some really good YouTube videos out there.

So depending on what sort of banding interview you're going for, if it's band five, band six, band seven, there's really good YouTube interview videos out there.

So I would search them and have a listen.

They're really good.

Lessons From My Children’s Nursing Placements

So my first placement, gosh, we're going back a long way here in terms of my first placement, that would have been about 13, 14 years ago.

My first placement was at Great Ormond Street.

So I trained at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.

And it was actually on Ladybird ward, it was called Ladybird ward back then, it's probably changed its name now.

And that was a cardiology ward. And that was so fascinating.

I learnt so much in regards to the heart, all the heart illnesses and diseases and deformities that you come across.

And because it's so specialised, not things that you would normally see in like a general hospital.

So for that, I'm really grateful.

That was my first placement at Great Ormond Street Ladybird ward, which is heart cardiology.

My third year placement was NICU.

And I think at that point, I really wanted to be a Neonatal Nurse.

My last placement was in NICU and SCBU however, as you can see, I'm not a neonatal or SCBU nurse now.

I just found after that placement, it wasn't for me, I don't think.

Way too emotional seeing these little babies in incubators and tiny being born at like, you know, 30 weeks, 28 weeks.

I just found it so emotional.

So yeah, that placement didn't transpire to my career today, but that's okay.

That's okay, that's the whole point of being a Student Nurse.

You're getting to know what areas of nursing that you like, what you don't like, what you enjoy, what you're not quite sure about, that's the whole point.

And it doesn't matter if your last placement is not the placement, it's not the job that you took once you qualified and got your pin, that doesn't matter.

No one says that you have to stay in a certain place forever, move around, get experience everywhere, you know.

My First Experience Of School Nursing

My first experience of School Nursing was probably about eight years ago and I really, really enjoyed it.

I've really enjoyed the health promotion side of things.

So going into schools, both secondary and primary, we'll do lots of things like assemblies.

We'll do classes on all various topics, from healthy eating, puberty, dental hygiene, oral hygiene, we'd also for the older kids do things like sexual health and contraception.

I love all that sort of stuff, getting in front of a class of people and just, you know, taking all the questions during the presentations.

I really enjoyed that side of it.

So that's my first experience of School Nursing.

So yeah, I hope you enjoyed that video and found some useful things from there and I will see you next time, bye.