Collaboration Between a School Nurse Task Force and the Local Health Department in Illinois: Development of a COVID-19 Toolkit

Abstract

Multidisciplinary collaboration for healthy student outcomes is not a new concept for school nurses nor is working with public health officials in promoting school–community initiatives. The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, coronavirus disease 2019) virus further highlighted the need to work together to promote best practice strategies to arm the community with information and guidance to prevent illness. The McHenry County Health Department recognized the expertise school nurses have in school health and formed a voluntary School Nurse Task Force. This collaboration worked to implement requirements for operating a school during a pandemic. The task force adapted those concepts into a toolkit to assist schools to meet health requirements throughout the most significant pandemic in over 100 years.

The Changing Job of School Nurses during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Media Content Analysis of Contributions to Stress

“… Kunz et al (2022) reported school nurses participating in a task force with the director of a county public health nursing department, nurses from a communicable disease department, and epidemiologists to ‘provide consistent county-wide implementation of COVID-19-related protocols’ ( Kunz et al , 2022 ). This type of communication/guidance work was also identified in our analysis, where the media articles also captured school nurse involvement in vaccination and testing outside the school environment.…”

School nursing: New ways of working with children and young people during the Covid‐19 pandemic: A scoping review

“…SNs assisted or collaborated with local and state‐level partners to pre‐empt and manage Covid‐19 outbreaks. These efforts focused on case monitoring and contact tracing (Marrapese et al, 2021 ; Robarge, 2021 ; Robinson, 2021 ; Traut, 2020 ), developing vaccination plans and follow‐ups (Kunz et al, 2022 ; Park et al, 2021 ), resource development and sharing (Kunz et al, 2022 ; Maughan et al, 2021 ; Unknown, 2020b ), collaboratively investigating Covid‐19 outbreaks in the school community (Fauteux, 2021 ), acquiring PPE and planning for Covid‐related scenarios (Traut, 2020 ), and assisting in planning and guidance for students' return to school (Schwind, 2020 ; Traut, 2020 ). More broadly, SNs served as ‘a professional link’ between districts and local health centers (Booher, 2020 , p. 22).…”

Cross-sector and interprofessional collaborations

“…Some scholars argue that educational challenges such as literacy (Jordan, Kleinsasser and Roe, 2014 [32]), curriculum reform (Hawick, Cleland and Kitto, 2017[33]) and teacher evaluation (Lillejord, Elstad and Kavli, 2018[34]) are "wicked problems" (Rittel and Webber, 1973[35]), to be tackled using "wicked responses" or "wicked actions" (Jordan, Kleinsasser and Roe, 2014 [32]). Wicked problems are symptoms of other problems, context-bound and do not have an easy one-time-fix solution (Jordan, Kleinsasser and Roe, 2014 [32]; Rittel and Webber, 1973[35]): Sustainable development and climate change are the staple examples. An important part of dealing with wicked problems is to support cross-sector collaboration (Lawson and Lawson, 2020[36]), where different stakeholders with different perspectives discuss, argue and innovate to respond to the issue at hand (Jordan, Kleinsasser and Roe, 2014 [32]):…”

“…Wicked problems are symptoms of other problems, context-bound and do not have an easy one-time-fix solution (Jordan, Kleinsasser and Roe, 2014 [32]; Rittel and Webber, 1973[35]): Sustainable development and climate change are the staple examples. An important part of dealing with wicked problems is to support cross-sector collaboration (Lawson and Lawson, 2020[36]), where different stakeholders with different perspectives discuss, argue and innovate to respond to the issue at hand (Jordan, Kleinsasser and Roe, 2014 [32]):…”

“…Wicked responses and actions demand interactive, relational and distributed sensemaking that might begin to include 'ongoing revisions and updates and fleshing out of diagnoses' (Weick, personal correspondence) and 'coordination of action over alignment of cognitions, mutual respect over agreement, trust over empathy, diversity over homogeneity, loose over tight coupling, and strategic communication over unrestricted candour' (Weick, 2005, p. 27 and 59 [37]). (Jordan, Kleinsasser and Roe, 2014, p. 426 [32])…”