Nurses in Catholic Secondary Schools: Inaugural one-day conference
Fifteen secondary schools in the Melbourne Archdiocese employ twenty six Division 1 nurses to staff the school Health Centre.
The network of nurses meet each term to share ideas, critically reflect on issues they deal with and feel supported by professional learning. The school nurses network is part of the Student Wellbeing Unit initiative and was established four years ago:
- to promote health through the development of policies, information and curriculum initiatives for the school community
- to address good practice and develop and share resources
as well as providing appropriate primary health care through professional clinical nursing.
In November, the first one-day conference - Putting Together the Jigsaw of Adolescent Behaviour: A Whole School Approach to Wellbeing - was held. As well as nurses in attendance, members of their school SWB teams accompanied them.
The first session was run by Andrew Fuller on Adolescent Risk-Taking Behaviours. As usual with Andrew's presentations, staff were engaged and full of questions an comments.
A session on mental health promotion was run by Julie Blacker and Barb Collard from the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Finally, Lea Trafford from the Centre for Adolescent Health spoke about Adolescent Health and Wellbeing and ran a very interactive session with activities that nurses could then use with staff and students in their schools to promote health through the curriculum and learning programs.
