Welcome to the Delaware School Nurse Association’s state of the art website. We hope that you find our website a valuable resource. As colleagues we share the responsibility of meeting the needs of our students and families. By sharing resources and information, together we can better address the daily challenges of keeping our students well.
Over the next two years it is my hope that we will be able to continue working with those in the community to refresh established partnerships and create new ones. It takes all of us to reach out in the community and make our voice heard as well as to understand the growing challenges and needs our communities are facing.
School nurses give selflessly of their time. We are constantly challenged to depend not only on our nursing knowledge but on our intuition and ingenuity to deal with many different situations in our offices at any time. We wear many hats in our school nurse role. Collectively, our years of experience are phenomenal! It is my hope that over the next two years we can work together to share this collective knowledge . One of my goals is to improve communication within our membership especially reaching out to “newer” nurses to share the knowledge and experience of our “seasoned” nurses.
During my school nurse orientation I remember a counselor telling us, “others may tell you what a great job you have to be off on holidays and in the summer”. “But”, he reminded us, “Those 188 days during the school year are like being on a treadmill constantly.” What a great analogy!
Personally, I see us like lighthouses. We are beacons of light. We are sometimes the only refuge during the storms of our students’ lives. We offer a multitude of services: health expert, researcher, educator, mentor, counselor and crisis manager. Those times we have away from our buildings are well-deserved and meant for refreshing our bodies, minds and spirits so that our lights may continue to shine.
It is an honor to serve as President of the Delaware School Nurse Association. I look forward to working with you and our community partners. I leave you with this quote from Helen Keller: “I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something” Thank you for all you do each and every day to improve the well-being of our students in Delaware. I welcome your suggestions and input as to how we can maintain a viable association while we continue to grow.
Elizabeth Light, RN, MSN, NCSN
Delaware School Nurse Association President