Wednesday, May 12, 1999

School nurses dole out care

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Students' needs run the gamut

BY CHRISTINE WOLFF
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        MONTGOMERY — Watching nurse Ginny Geary Laskovics do her job at Sycamore Junior High School makes one want to hum a song from Mary Poppins.

        That one about the medicine going down easier with just a spoonful of sugar.

        “See ya, sweet,” she says to each child who visits her office, along with a megawatt smile, and warmth that melts anything unpleasant.

        “I love the kids. In the summer, I miss them. Especially at this age, they feel too old for mothering, but from the school nurse, it's OK,” she said.

        She's been doling out pills, Band-Aids, cough drops and ice packs for eight years at Sycamore Junior High. In April, her work was honored with a Florence Nightingale Award for Excellence in Nursing from the University of Cincinnati's College of Nursing.

        Mrs. Laskovics was the only school nurse among the six health-care professionals around Greater Cincinnati recognized this year by the annual UC award. Each winner received $1,000; Mrs. Laskovics donated her money to be used to help the school's developmentally handicapped students.

        The award acknowledges the complexity of school nursing, which Mrs. Laskovics compares to running a small emergency room.

        Changes in laws have brought more medically fragile children out of separate classes and into regular schools, and today's emphasis on liability also makes school officials wary and the school nurse's job more detailed, said Bev Klitz, nurse at Sycamore Junior for 23 years.

        There's a full-time nurse each school day at all seven schools in the Sycamore district; many districts don't staff that thoroughly because state law doesn't require school nurses.

        The biggest part of their job: dispensing medicine, from prescription drugs such as Ritalin (for children with attention disorders) to over-the-counter medicines such as aspirin. Sycamore's nurses can give medicine only to students who have written permission from a doctor and parent.

        Daily at Sycamore Junior, 53 of the school's 1,100 children receive medicine from the nurse.

        “We set up the medicine the night before. They only get five minutes between classes,” Mrs. Laskovics said. “But I always insist they say, "thank you.'”

        The good-manners lesson comes with ample sugar from Mrs. Laskovics. headOTHER WINNERS

        Other recipients of the 1999 Florence Nightingale Award for Excellence in Nursing from the University of Cincinnati's College of Nursing:

        • Judy DiMuzio, diabetes educator for Diabetes and Endocrinology Associates.

        • Clarissa Rentz, clinical specialist at Cincinnati's chapter of the Alzheimer's Association.

        • Theo Nodler, with the emergency department at St. Elizabeth Medical Center.

        • Barbara Johnson, with the medical/pulmonary/oncology floor at Good Samaritan Hospital.

        • Sister Tose Zuber, who works with the aging, ill and dying in her order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

       

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