Harns Marsh Elementary and Middle school nurse Melissa Wallace was surprised with a parade last week from her fellow East County school nurses after being named School Nurse of the Year. PHOTO PROVIDED

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A nurse who divides her time between Harns Marsh Elementary and Harns Marsh Middle School was surprised last week with a high honor — she was named School Nurse of the Year.

“I was completely shocked,” Melissa Wallace said.

The surprise started when a late meeting was scheduled at 3:30 p.m., which she thought was kind of strange, but then thought they all have been so busy. At 4 p.m. she walked out of the building because a parent needed to speak to her, but was pleasantly surprised when her family, friends and co-workers greeted her with balloons. In addition, all of the school nurses in the East Zone held a parade for her as they drove by with signs on their cars.

The School Nurse of the Year award began in 2004. District spokesperson Rob Spicker said school nurses are nominated by their school principal and then a committee reviews the applications, selects finalists and conducts interviews to choose a winner, who is presented with a plaque.

Before Wallace began her nursing career with the Lee County School District nine years ago, always in the East Zone, she was a labor and delivery nurse in Naples. She married a teacher and, when they were expecting their first child, though it might be nice to have the same schedule. A good friend told her about a school nurse opening and she applied.

“I never thought I would do this when I went to nursing school. Now here I am nine years later. It’s absolutely the perfect fit for me,” Wallace said. “I love being with these students and being able to make a difference in their lives, especially with the population in the East Zone. Families need so much. It’s a great feeling being able to help them, a new pair of glasses, setting up doctor’s appointments, or helping them get insurance.”

There are just under 1,000 students at the elementary school and close to 1,400 students at the middle school. Wallace has a full-time clinic assistant at both schools both of whom are trained to administer medication.

“I am the only RN between the two schools,” she said.

Wallace typically spends two days per week at each school. At the beginning of the year the fifth day is dedicated to screenings and at the end of the year she goes where she is needed more.

She said sometimes it’s nice to get a break from one place, while other times it’s hard being split between the two schools because both need her at the same time. When this happens it results in a phone call where she is doing assessments over the phone.

“I love every second of it,” Wallace said.

With being at Harns Marsh for eight years, this year she is saying goodbye to eighth graders who she has been with since they entered kindergarten.

“They know me and know who I am and hopefully, I think the parents trust me and that helps too,” Wallace said. “Building relationships with them has been so nice, I’m definitely going to miss them.”

Being a school nurse is not about “Band-Aids and ice packs,” she said.

This school year has been a year unlike anything she has ever experienced. On top of her normal duties as the school nurse — creating care plans, giving medications and training staff –Wallace also had to keep up with policies that sometimes changed day to day. She then kept parents and families informed about policies that did not always make them happy.

She said she tried to get families to understand “We didn’t make the rules, they were coming from CDC guidelines and that is a battle in itself.”

In addition, a healthy clinic room and COVID isolation room had to be set up, which Wallace said included training staff. She said it has been quite a year all around in trying to fill in, train and get everything accomplished. 

“The kids have been amazing. They are so resilient and so flexible. It surprised all of us,” Wallace said, adding that at the beginning of the school year it was said that kids will never wear masks all day. “They do and they have. They are flexible and they can follow whatever we ask them to do.”

With that said, COVID has brought other challenges to students, such as mental health issues. Wallace said some of those issues stem from separation anxiety from their parents after spending so much time with them when schools closed for last year’s fourth quarter, anxiety over being in the school building, from hearing COVID information on the news, as well as the financial impact on many families.

A financial impact often times was felt as the result of a child being sent home for 10 days to quarantine as it had impacts on the family and parents taking time off of work.

Wallace said in all of their schools there is a school-based mental health team comprised of school counselors, social workers, school nurses and sometimes teachers and administration staff.

“We meet with students and talk to parents to see what the needs are,” she said, adding that it might result in setting them up with food, clothing, or counseling depending on their needs.

Still, to this day, Wallace loves being a school nurse. Most of all she loves when eye glasses are delivered from their vision program, a relationship with Vision Quest which provides free eye exams and glasses.

“I love when the glasses come and I give the students brand new glasses. Some of them didn’t realize they couldn’t see before,” she said, adding that the students often say they can see the poster across the room when putting on the glasses. “They had no idea it was an issue for them.”

The team she works with makes her job easier, both her school families and the other nurses in the East Zone.

“I’m very grateful to work with the team I work with, whether at schools, or other nurses in the East Zone. It’s very nice to have a team to count on and be there no matter what. None of us could have done it without each other,” Wallace said. “My school families, they let me do my job and they value my expertise. I really appreciate that because it’s not always the case.”