Lynne:
What I have learned over the years about leadership is that leadership is just, for me, it’s not about a title, it’s not about anything like that. It’s really about wanting to make a difference, and then everything follows from that point on. So making a difference is what I strive to do in whatever I do. I just try to make a difference, because I faithfully believe that a leader is one who knows the way, shows the way and goes the way.

Nacole:
That’s our guest, Lynne Meadows. She has more than 30 years of nursing and healthcare experience. And you better believe she knows what it takes to be a successful leader. After almost 15 years of working in the hospital setting, Lynne made a major career change. She built a school nursing program from the ground up. I’m talking no protocols, no existing tracks, nothing. And today, it’s one of Georgia’s top programs. In this interview, she tells us all about that journey and how it has made her into the amazing leader she is today. She also educated me about the vital role that school nurses play in their communities. And yes, folks, school nursing is much more than BAND-AIDS and ice.

Nacole:
My name is Nacole Riccaboni. I’m a critical care nurse working in Florida and your host for SHIFT Talk. This podcast is brought to you by SHIFT, a new community for nurses ready to make a change. SHIFT is sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Follow us on Instagram at shiftnursing and for more awesome stories and real talk about nursing, head over to our website at shiftnursing.com. One final note: This episode was recorded in late August and things with COVID might’ve changed. Now buckle up and let’s dig in.

Nacole:
Lynne, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your career and what you do today?

Lynne:
Sure, I’m happy to Nacole. So today, I am actually the coordinator of student health services for the fourth largest school district in the state of Georgia.

Nacole:
Oh wow.

Lynne:
And my role there is to oversee and manage our school health services program. I’ve actually been at this for 20 years. The district hired me some 20 years ago to kind of come in and create their school health program. And that was back in the year of 2000, and at that time, our governor took some of the tobacco settlement funding and wanted to ensure that there were registered nurses in every school system across the state of Georgia. And so my role was to come in to develop our school health services program in our school district, which is Fulton County school system.

Nacole:
Oh, wow. So you created this entire program from scratch.

Lynne:
I did. I, along with seven other registered nurses. Now I have a team of 23 registered nurses and 106 clinic assistants, but at the time in 2000, I was coming from the hospital setting. And so my role was to come in the school district, create the program, and so, I will tell you lots of lessons learned. It was probably one, if not one of the most rewarding things that I had ever done. Because I was, literally Nacole, given a small desk with a computer, a pencil and pad, and said, you’re now the coordinator of student health services, have at it.. And I was like Ahhh. But I had seven other registered nurses depending on me and looking at me. And then I had, at that time, I think our school district had about 73,000 students.

Nacole:
Wow. That’s a lot.

Lynne:
It is, but now it’s 93,000 students.

Nacole:
I know.

Lynne:
And so back then it seemed to be big and scary, and you know, it still is, but, you know, I really took in stride the opportunity and all the skills that I’d learned from being in the hospital setting and being a leader in the hospital. And I will tell you, those skills transferred quite nicely to the school district. And I just had my perspective and I got the support of the seven other registered nurses there, their support, that we were going to start with the end in mind. And that end in mind was that we were going to develop a health services program that would be renowned around the state, and that would be excellent services and programs for our students and staff that we serve. So that was always our goal, and we just kept striving for that goal.

Nacole:
I couldn’t imagine starting a program from scratch without having any sort of infrastructure in place. That must have been a big, big undertaking for you, but you thrived. You’re flourishing right now. That’s awesome.

Lynne:
It was definitely not a solo act. I think I was just the catalyst to get things done. But what I knew was that, because I was coming from a hospital setting and knew about pediatrics — because my first career start was in pediatrics, and I have a concentration, part of my master’s is pediatric health. So I knew about pediatrics, but I didn’t know about developing obviously a school health program. So what I did was, back then, I looked to see what are some resources that can help educate me and what are some best practices around the country? And so I did, I went on road trips to visit other school settings and other school districts. I looked for programs that supported school health and school health services and our school district long, long ago was one of the first school districts to participate in a program called the Urban Community School Health Program. It was a program that was developed and scheduled by the American, believe it or not, the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association, they were very interested in school health. And so they brought school districts, seven school districts, around from around the country together, to kind of come bring us together to look at What should a school health services program look like in a school district? And so it was a shared approach, and so I was able to take a team of folks from my school district, folks from public health, some other community leaders to that program. And that really helped me then come back to our school district and start the leg work of developing our program

Nacole:
For sure. And it seems like you came very prepared, you did your research, and that’s why that program is thriving and doing so well. This wasn’t luck at all. This was through hard work and dedication.

Lynne:
Well, I appreciate that. It was a lot of hard work. We had days where I had to remind myself, Rome was not built in a day.

Nacole:
I bet.

Lynne:
So just take, you know, one day at a time. And like most nurses, I’m type A, so it, you know, and I’m a workaholic. So I work, work and work. I just finally have to say, I gotta go home!

Nacole:
Now what are some common perceptions or misperceptions of school nursing?

Lynne:
I think the most common misperception is that school nurses simply, you know, are in schools, and we simply just give out BAND-AIDS. And we actually have tee shirts that say, school nursing is just far more than just giving out BAND-AIDS. Because it really is that misconception out there. And unless you utilize the school nurse in terms of, from a family perspective or a student perspective, you don’t really understand the depth of school nursing. And there’s a lot to school nursing. It’s public health. It’s being a public health nurse, it’s being a pediatric nurse, kind of all rolled into one, but in a school setting, it’s just that we’re not in a healthcare organization or hospital, but everything that a nurse in any other industry does, we do. Critical thinking, we have to have the right qualifications, we have to keep up with staff development. So all those things are things that school nurses also have to be concerned about.

Nacole:
I bet. And just children with these, you know, new-founded chronic conditions and illnesses, you guys have to manage that too. It’s more than just BAND-AIDS and ice. For sure.

Lynne:
Absolutely, far more than that. It’s managing kids every day who come to school with chronic illnesses, and those we manage on a day-to-day basis. For sure. And we have health care plans that, you know, help determine what needs to be done, when it needs to be done and how it needs to be done in a school setting. And so we have a medication delivery system. But even beyond those kids that have chronic illnesses, every day in a school setting, you can imagine that somebody is going to get sick, that doesn’t have a chronic illness. Somebody may have the opportunity to have an injury, whether it’s a playground injury, just falling in the hall, et cetera. And the school nurses have to be ready and prepared to respond to that. In addition to the students, you gotta remember, we have staff in the building. Anything could happen to the staff.

Nacole:
Oh, I didn’t even think about that. Oh wow.

Lynne:
You gotta be able to respond.

Nacole:
I didn’t think about adults in the situation. Gotcha.

Lynne:
Absolutely. So although many of our school nurses come from a pediatric background, you still have to know how to manage the staff that may be in your building. So even things like having AEDs in the schools, somebody has to be able to respond to an emergency, and it’s the school nurses that do that. And that’s where our guidelines and protocols, just like if you’re in the hospital, we have written guidelines, we have written protocol, we have manuals, we have standards to follow. So it’s no different from if you’re a nurse in other settings.

Nacole:
Now, what would you want other nurses to know about this particular area of nursing, especially those who might want to consider this kind of job as a career path?

Lynne:
I would say that it is an awesome career path, and that if you have a love for pediatrics or love for even, you know, kind of some work in the nursing world under public health — cause we deal with a lot of public health issues. You have to think, you know, we’re ensuring that kids have proper immunizations, and we do a lot of things just beyond school, even in the community. We work with a lot of community resources, because as a school nurse, you can’t do it all, but you establish partnerships, whether that’s bringing in help from different medical vans. For instance, we have opportunities where we bring dental services and vision services in, and things like that, that meet the needs of students. So I would say from a career perspective, if you love the area of pediatrics and are looking for something, maybe out of a non-traditional setting, like the hospital or a healthcare organization, this is a great place for you. Especially if you have some experience under your belt, because I will say with school nursing, it’s tough. You know, if you’re a new graduate just coming into a school setting, because you’re, you know, the autonomy that you have and the independency that you have, you’ve got to be able to think on your feet, you gotta be quick, your critical skills have to be, you know, mature to some extent there’s a lot of verbal and written information. And one of the things that we always say is, our patients are our kids, but they’re still our patients.

Nacole:
Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. Yeah. I get what you’re saying. Yeah. I didn’t even think about that. You guys do like whole body.

Lynne:
Whole body.

Nacole:
Like literal whole body.

Lynne:
That’s right.

Nacole:
I didn’t even think about that.

Lynne:
That’s right. And things that we can’t do, the good thing about school nursing is, again, when I was talking about those community partners, school nurses are probably some of the most resourceful nurses ever. Because you need to be able to refer parents to different community services when that’s appropriate, you need to be able — and we say this all the time in school nursing, I tell my nurses this — the clinics in our schools across the country are really a safe haven for kids. So it’s also an opportunity for us to pick up what we call bread crumbs, when kids do come in the clinic and we’re listening, constantly listening, constantly asking questions, because if there are things going on with kids, we want to know about that. And even though we’re not the counselors, we’re not school social workers, or, you know, we’re not school psychologists, but if we pick up on some breadcrumbs and we feel like a student needs to be referred or there’s something going on that we may not be able to manage under our lane, we certainly can intervene and refer them to those appropriate settings. You know, I believe that school nurses, again, through just having that engagement with students. And being a trusted soul in the school gives kids that opportunity, if they are in trouble, that we maybe can abate that by them coming in the clinic.

Nacole:
I remember my school nurse in middle school and high school, she was the one that everyone talked to. And I never knew why, but she was kind of our person.

Lynne:
That’s right.

Nacole:
And I never really thought about that until you just brought that up there. We leaned on her a lot. We told her stuff that we didn’t tell our parents, and she would give us advice on stuff. It wasn’t just the sickness aspect of the care, it was also mental health too.

Lynne:
That’s right. That’s right.

Nacole:
Now let’s talk some more about your career. How did you develop your leadership skills? What was that fire that kind of kept you burning and pushing further?

Lynne:
I think for me, just over the years, because now this is my 30 plus year in nursing. And again, I had the wonderful opportunity where I started my career in our largest trauma hospital here in the city of Atlanta. And, you know, through that experience, it gave me an opportunity to really challenge myself in my younger nursing years. And I had the opportunity to kind of climb the ladder appropriately within the hospital setting. And so from that point, just kind of having that experience of moving to the next level. But what I will tell you, what I have learned over the years about leadership, is that leadership is just, for me, it’s not about a title, it’s not about anything like that. It’s really about wanting to make a difference. And then everything follows from that point on. So making a difference is what I strive to do in whatever I do. I just try to make a difference, which that has afforded me to have some amazing leadership roles. But in that, what I’ve learned about also, with leadership, my staff will tell you at every level that I’ve been at since being in critical leadership roles, is that I’m that type of leader where I’m not going to ask you to do anything that I’m not willing to do myself. Because I faithfully believe that a leader is one who knows the way, shows the way, and goes the way. So I’m not going to expect anything of you that I’m not going to expect of myself, but I am going to make sure that as a team, my leadership style is that I’m very inclusive. Even as school nurses, my team meets every single month. And it’s so that I make sure that they have information because I believe knowledge is power. Whatever I know, you need to know. And I think that’s how you also build other leaders. It’s very important for me to make sure that, although I am the leader by title, every one of my nurses is a leader in their own right. And they bring that leadership to our team. So I think if you make sure that, as a leader, just what has worked for me, is that you instill in the folks that are looking to you as the leader, to make sure that they know they are just as powerful in their work and what they bring to the table every day. And the leader is just simply, somebody has to guide the ship, but everybody in that ship makes a difference. Because when one falls off when rowing that boat and we’re all on that ship, we all fall.

Nacole:
That’s so true. And we need more leaders like you, I’m just gonna be honest with you, because not every leader feels that way. They don’t take it as a team effort. Oh my God, you’re a perfect boss. I’m assuming everyone in your organization loves you.

Lynne:
Well, and it’s because I love them. And what I really have learned, you know, again, and everybody matures in their leadership, but I have matured to the fact that I think what we keep as the important should be the important. All my nurses know we have to take care of kids, and they know my ethics and my belief is that we’re going to always deliver the best excellent services that we can, but every day they come to work and they have their own life and stuff to deal with. And so having empathy for when they may not be having the best day, or how can I support you individually as a person so that when you come on the job you’re at that base, you can give that excellent service? So just even having some empathy, my nurses know, if your baby has a baseball game and it’s important to you to go to, we’re going to work it out where you get to that baseball game.

Nacole:
Oh that’s so great.

Lynne:
Because you can never get that time back.

Nacole:
You can’t get it back. Oh, that’s so great to hear on a leadership level that you understand that your staff is also going to have their own personal commitments, that you will try to work out with them. That is amazing.

Lynne:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Nacole:
Now, during your career, did you have mentors or would you recommend mentors for other nurses?

Lynne:
Yes. So I had lots of wonderful mentors when I was in the hospital. And then actually when I transitioned over to the school health setting, I found mentors. And remember I talked about, that when I first started developing the school health services program at Fulton, I did not know much about creating a program. And so I used to call it, I’m on my bus trip, I’m on my field trip. I would go out to other school districts that already had leaders, school health leaders in place, and kind of pick their brain. And how did you do this? And just learn, absorb as much information as I could. And so some of them became my mentors, and I never forgot how they made me feel as a young leader and all of the knowledge and wisdom they imparted into me. So for me, mentorship is very, very important. If you came to Georgia right now and you asked around the state, do you know Lynne Meadows, probably every school nurse in the state of Georgia, most of them will say, yes, ma’am. I do know Lynne Meadows.

Nacole:
Oh that’s awesome!

Lynne:
And that’s only because I believe in giving back. And so right now I probably am mentoring about six lead nurses from across the state who are also now in leadership positions. I serve as the state director for our Georgia Association of School Nurses, which means that I represent all of the school nurses in the state of Georgia. And in our affiliate, our president of our Georgia Association of School Nurses, she and I about now, it’s been about four years ago, we created a School Nurse Leadership Academy. So every year when we have our annual school nurse conference, we have an eight hour Leadership Academy that we developed some four or five years ago. So that, to your point, we could make sure that as other leaders are coming into school nursing, at least in the state of Georgia, that they have some mentoring, they have support, they have information as a new leader. And so the other thing is that we, you know, as I said, I’m 30 years in the game now, I’m not going to always be around and we want to make sure that this work though is always around.

Nacole:
That’s realistic. Oh, that’s nice. And it’s a big picture thought process. That’s so smart. Well said.

Lynne:
Yeah. It’s just passing on the legacy. Just passing it on.

Nacole:
Yeah, for sure. And you’re helping other people develop their voices, which is so crucial.

Lynne:
Yes ma’am, yes ma’am.

Nacole:
Now what are some of the health disparities that school nurses would observe or that you’ve seen, and how would you address them?

Lynne:
So I think, I mean, we’re no different than other, you know, agencies or places around the country that can see and realize health disparities, whether it’s anything from, you know, lack of care or access to care. And so again, nurses, we see what is lacking from our students, and our role is if it’s something health related or something that is under our umbrella that we can affect that change, we go out and do it. I’ll give you an example. I talked about, for instance, you know, us partnering with other community agencies like mobile vans to bring in more vision services and dental. Those in some regards were disparities that we saw. Some of our, like in our school districts, we saw the need in certain areas where there was a lack of health care. We now have two school based health centers in our school districts. And in these two schools, the nearest pediatric offices were some distance away from them, the nearest hospital. And so we thought again, and we found it out because we were realizing that, why are the kids in this area not being properly immunized? And when we looked at it, it was a matter of a disparity because there wasn’t any place to get immunized or readily get immunized. And so again, just nurses looking at their population, looking at what the needs are in their school system. And then just trying to work with your community partners in your district to bring those services to families. It makes all the difference in the world. Cause I say all the time, again, that’s the work, again, that school nurses do that people may not ever know about, may not ever hear about. But again, we’re on the front lines, doing those kinds of things, making sure that these health disparities that we see, in whatever way that we can try to change them or affect them that we’re trying to at least.

Nacole:
Nice. Now, how have you tried to bridge the gap for at risk kids and medically vulnerable kids while they’re kind of out of school right now?

Lynne:
So that has been a huge undertaking by school nurses. And so in this space of COVID right now, school nurses, first and foremost, let me say this, have not stopped working. In fact, we’re on the front line. And I can speak for my school system. I am the leadership liaison between what’s going on with our public health entities and our federal organizations and bringing that information back to our school districts. And we’re sitting at the table in most school systems, helping our leadership look at — because this is a public health pandemic. And so who else should be at the table than your school health leadership and your school nurses? We are nurses. This is our space. This is our area. That’s our lane. That’s exactly right. So we are, you know, at the table helping our districts to look at reopening plans. And how do we deal with the pandemic? You know, when kids are virtual, and what does the school district need to look like when kids start transitioning back face to face? So right now, the way that we’re engaging families is, my nurses and my nursing team, we are still communicating with parents, whether that’s virtually or by phone to make sure our kids who have chronic illnesses are still, you know, parents now, we’re checking in with them to make sure our kids are still okay and keeping a pulse on them. We are also working as case investigators, which means that in this space now of COVID, we’re working with our public health department, because when there is a potential case that has an impact or affects our school district, it is my school nursing team that initially finds out the who, what, when and how, getting that information, and then talking that through with public health. And then they take on the contact tracing piece. So the case investigation is a lot different from the contact tracing, but it’s my school nurses for instance, when the pandemic first hit back in March and April, when public health needed that, they were trying to build up their infrastructure of contact tracers, and they needed help with just the, you know, pieces of their response to COVID. Many of my nurses were doing their job at the school district and then volunteering with public health to man things like their hotlines, to help, you know, people in the community. That was important to us, because those people in the community were our families that we serve every day.

Nacole:
Sure. That’s your kind of whole community right there? I did not know that that was even an element. There’s so many levels to being a school nurse. It’s so crazy. It’s cool. I would have never thought about any of this stuff. That’s so neat.

Lynne:
Yes. Lots of layers to school nursing. And I’m just so thankful for an opportunity like this, because again, one of the things as a nurse leader in and outside of my school district is to do exactly what I’m doing now, to use my voice, to speak out about what school nurses do and to debunk those myths and misconceptions about what school nursing is versus what it’s not. And that this is an awesome profession and an awesome opportunity for nurses who might be looking, you know, what their next choice might be in terms of a career. I would have never thought that I would have landed in this space, but for me, the way that things just happened, divine intervention, how I even got this position, and now some 20 years have been in this space. And I will continue, even long after I retire, to always use the opportunity and my voice to speak about the importance of school nurses and how we ensure truly that children in our school systems are held safe and ready to learn. And that’s our goal.

Nacole:
And we have one more last question for you that we ask all of our guests. What is your vision for the future of nursing?

Lynne:
Wow, that’s a big one.

Nacole:
I know.

Lynne:
That is an excellent question. And I’ll piggyback on what I was just saying. I think my vision for the future of nursing is just that nurses in all specialties will just continue to utilize our voice, to get across to the public the importance that we bring and the value that we bring to the health industry across the country, for everything. I mean, I read a book, called From Silence to Voice. And that book really changed my life in terms of thinking about — we do a lot of times, and even when I was at the hospital, we know nurses are unsung heroes, but it’s time for us to speak out. It’s time for the public, even, to know the critical value, just like I said, that we bring. So my vision for the future of nurses is to continue to use our voice to make sure that the public and all others understand what we bring to the healthcare setting. And also to make sure this is — it’s funny that this year was the year of the nurse.

Nacole:
I know.

Lynne:
Here, we are in the midst of a pandemic. So if at any other time in our country and around the world, nurses have truly come to the forefront. And what we do and how we do things, and the ability for us to do things is at the forefront. And so my future of nursing is not that I want a pandemic, I don’t want it to take a pandemic to accentuate what nurses do, but it is nice that this is the year of the nurse, and nurses are getting some of the recognition that they solely deserve because of what they do. And nurses in general, we don’t, you know, look to seek to get accolades. You know, that’s just not us in nature, but it is important for us, the future of nursing, to have a voice so that we can continue to have a voice at all the tables that it relates to patient care and health. Because we know what it takes to take care of patients. And a lot of times innovations come from nurses in the healthcare setting. And so our voice is extremely important in the future.

Nacole:
Lynne, thank you so much for allowing us to interview you and kind of explain the intricacies of what school nursing was. You dove deep, you explained everything, and I am leaving this interview really flabbergasted as to the contribution that school nurses deal with. I never really thought about it to be honest with you, but there’s so many levels there, and that passion that you have, I hope everyone in that field has the same passion.

Lynne:
Well, thank you so much. It’s been my pleasure and an honor to talk with you all about school nursing today.

Nacole:
Thanks for listening to SHIFT Talk. This podcast is brought to you by SHIFT, a new community for nurses ready to make a change. SHIFT Talk is sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. To learn more about our guest and hear more nurses talk about the important issues we’re all facing right now, visit our website shiftnursing.com. And please subscribe, rate and review SHIFT Talk wherever you get your audio content from. Until next time, stay safe and keep being awesome!