Nursing students help elementary schools
By Tom Harshbarger
Daily Forty-Niner
The children's smiling faces make all the
hard work worthwhile for a few Cal State Long Beach nursing students.
These nurses are a part of the Health
on Wheels program, which visits five Norwalk elementary schools every week,
giving health care to underprivileged children.
"I work in critical care and the kids
are basically nonresponsive," said Cheryl Deters, a registered nurse and
second-year CSULB graduate student. "To come out here and work with kids
who can talk to me, answer questions and play games is a joy."
Deters said she has 25 years of experience
as a nurse and is working to get her master's degree as a registered nurse
practitioner.
Unlike registered nurses, RNPs can write
prescriptions and often work without a doctor's supervision.
Health on Wheels is a school-based medical
project sponsored by CSULB, Kaiser Permanente, the city of Norwalk and
the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District. Its staff provides vaccinations,
physicals and treatment and tries to educate parents about health, said
Veronica Torres, a registered nurse who is the school district program
adviser.
During the 1998-1999 school year, the
Health on Wheels staff saw 2,380 children, said Natalie Cheffer, coordinator
of the CSULB pediatric nurse practitioner program.
Among those, Cheffer said, were 1,684
immunizations and 320 illness visits.
The clinic also administered Hepatitis
B vaccinations at six middle schools in Norwalk and La Mirada, Cheffer
said.
The program's treatments are not only
available to students, though.
"We had one child who had just moved here
from Mexico and needed an immunization," Torres said. "They don't attend
here yet, but they know by word-of-mouth they can bring them here.
"Because all our services our free, we
get kids who have no insurance or don't trust going to an outside agency
because they don't know the language," she said.
Most children who use Health on Wheels
are Latinos, Torres said. She and other staff members speak Spanish and
have built a rapport with many of the patients and parents.
"I think the most important thing is when
the children leave here they don't feel like they've been threatened or
hurt," Deters said. "I want them to be comfortable, so they know we're
friends."
Graduate nursing students have to take
a group of core classes in their first year and do about 600 hours of clinical
work in their second year, Deters said. To complete the master's degree
either a comprehensive exam or thesis is required.
A state certification exam is required
to get an RNP license, Deters added.
The clinic is staffed by CSULB students,
an instructor, a medical assistant and high school students, such as Michael
Esquivel, a junior at Norwalk High. He said he works mostly as a gopher,
but gets to observe as part of a health services training program.
"I think it's a good opportunity we have
as students to come out here and get some real hands-on experience," said
Veronica Munoz-Rivera, a second-year RNP candidate at CSULB.
Olivia Lara, an RNP and CSULB instructor,
supervises the students as they treat their patients. She is also among
the bilingual staffers.
The parents, who have to come to the clinic
with their children, for the most part said they were happy with the care
their youngsters receive.
"I have health insurance now, but I didn't
before," said Cesar Manzo, whose son Anthony, 7, received a physical and
some follow-up tests. "It makes a real big difference. They're really good
about follow-ups. They called and reminded me to bring my son in."
Cheffer said that the Children's Hospital
of Orange County and Cedar's Sinai Medical Center run the only two other
mobile health clinics that she knows of in the area. Those programs, she
added, do not have college students working for them.
"Kaiser had a clinic that they would do
at one school in Norwalk, and the need was incredible," Cheffer said. "We
had community health students out there anyway, so we, the city and Kaiser
just got together, and it grew from there." |
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