Virginia school nurses recently gathered at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital for a day of mass casualty and disaster training hosted by the National Association of School Nurses (NASN). The NASN offers mass casualty training to anyone who cares for children so that they know how to react in an emergency.

Eighty-four school nurses attended and spent the day learning how to handle influenza outbreaks, school shootings, explosions, tornadoes, and a wide variety of other emergency situations, natural and otherwise, that could happen at any time.

Rebekah Reiner, Roanoke City nursing preceptor, tells www.WSLS.com, “Sometimes, the only person that they trust in the school is that nurse. So it’s nice knowing that the nurse is there to help and they feel a little more confident knowing that the nurse is stepping into the medical role.”

This was the first time that the School Emergency Triage training has been offered in the Roanoke area. School nurses fought to bring the program to Virginia in hopes that all local school nurses would get the necessary training to be a source of life-saving care and comfort in an emergency situation.

Ellen Carroll, school nurse manager for Carilion Student Health, tells www.WSLS.com, “No one wants to think that it will ever happen in their school, but unfortunately, things do happen in schools and schools are big resource areas for communities so we need to be prepared for that.”

To learn more about the National Association of School Nurses mass casualty and disaster training programs, visit here.

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