Tele-Nursing in Use at Northwestern

Posted 1/22/25

By Chris Fischer The use of telemedicine has been on the rise. Northwestern Area School benefits from this technology. The school has been using Avel eCare’s virtual nurse service since 2023. …

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Tele-Nursing in Use at Northwestern

Posted

By Chris Fischer
The use of telemedicine has been on the rise. Northwestern Area School benefits from this technology. The school has been using Avel eCare’s virtual nurse service since 2023.
Northwestern Superintendent Rob Lewis said “We’re a small district, so hiring full-time nurses is tough.” The district pays a fee, as well as a charge per student. For this, the school has on-demand access to a licensed nurse via telehealth. Lewis added “It’s way more cost-effective for a district our size than to have a full-time nurse on staff.”
Lewis used to work for a larger district. He said “I was in Redfield for 17 years, and we had a full-time nurse that whole time. You don’t realize how much you use them until you don’t have one.” Being in a smaller district had some different challenges. He said “They’re busy in a bigger school, and here… I don’t know if we could keep them gainfully employed or busy all day every day. So this (virtual nursing) just works.” He had considered hiring a nurse for a couple of hours a day. But, he said, “That’s good while they’re here, and you know some of the needs that we were specifically looking to get covered would have been met. But if someone falls and hits her head or breaks her arm on the playground when they’re not here, you still don’t have anything.”

Lewis heard about Avel eCare from other education professionals. He had been looking for ways to best support a student’s needs. He looked into the company, and “It was just a good fit for what we needed.”
Lewis explained how it works: “A student says they don’t feel good. The student will tell the teacher, and they’ll either bring them down here, or send them to the office. We’ve got an iPad that we use to do a Facetime visit with Avel ecare. They have several nurses around – I think many of them work from home, and some go to an office. We just get in a queue. Usually it’s 1 or 2 of them that do most of our nursing, and they check out the students.”
The school has equipment to use for these visits. Lewis said “We have the ability to monitor their temperature. We’ve got a little camera that can look in their throat and their ears. We’ve got a blood pressure cuff – those types of things. They’re able to measure heart rate and things like that, and do an overall evaluation.” A trained member of the school staff stays with the ill student, and follows instructions from the nurse.
The nurse will decide if further action is needed. Lewis continued “If it’s something where they think that the student needs to see a doctor, the Avel eCare nurse reaches out to parents or guardians. They close the loop there. Even if they just see someone for a tummyache, they will follow up with a parent to say ‘Rob was in today. He just saw me for a tummyache. Here’s what I thought.’ So the parents are always informed, and it’s actually a medical professional informing them about what’s going on, instead of a school person.”
Lewis said that the school averages 55-65 nurse visits a month. He wasn’t sure if Northwestern had ever had a nurse on staff. Ten members of the school staff are medication trained.
An emergency situation can happen at any time. He said “We've had people fall on the playground and break their arms. We've had people with concussions. That whole gamut still happens.” He expressed appreciation for the virtual nursing service. “Three years ago, when I first got here, there was us trying to figure it out and then calling parents. Now we've got a medical professional. We've had a couple medical emergencies in the building in the last couple years. Having them there to help guide us until an ambulance got here or parents got here or has been very, very helpful.”
Virtual school nursing companies help fill in gaps in service, particularly for rural school districts. “It’s a great opportunity.” Lewis said.