I opened William House Day Nursery in Darlington 15 years ago this year. It is a reasonably large nursery with 90 children and 35 staff, and for the last 12 years we have employed a full-time nurse.
I decided to recruit a nurse because I felt she would enhance the staff team. Our present nurse, Edith Walker, is a state registered nurse and has been working with us full time for four years.
Although the staff are trained nursery nurses and know about the development of children from birth and how to give medicines, I felt having a trained nurse with us would give our parents greater confidence and security.
They know that Edith has worked in hospitals and in the community, and obviously administered medicines and looked after sick children. They know that if their child becomes poorly, a nurse is here for them.
Duties
Edith is in charge of monitoring, recording and storing prescription medicines. The parents know that we never give any medicines that have not been prescribed.
If a child becomes poorly during the day, she will assess their condition, liaise with the parent or carer, telephone them to ask them to collect the child and assist the staff in monitoring and managing them until the parent arrives.
Edith takes charge of completing the care plans for children with medical conditions and will also deal with adults within the nursery if anything unfortunate happens.
She monitors, records and updates children's specific dietary requirements and will, if necessary, do a first-aid evaluation. She talks to the parents at the end of the day and tells them what we have been doing. If a child has a nasty bang on the head she will tell the parents what has happened and advise them to seek medical help.
She is always there so parents can talk to her about health issues. She gives them information, but never gives advice. It is not her role to say, 'I think you should be doing this or that.'
If a parent asks her about the MMR jab, she tells them both sides of the argument and says the best thing is to speak to their GP or health visitor.
She also maintains our holistic approach and monitors and maintains our anti-discriminatory practices, looking after any children or staff with any special needs.
We have children with allergies, asthma and eczema. When a child joins the nursery with a specific condition or need, Edith will have a consultation with the parents and will go through all the details for the care plan.
She asks about any medication the child is having, what it is, when it was prescribed and by whom, and who we need to contact if for any reason we need any back-up. When she is off, our senior line managers deal with medication.
Children
There is plenty for her to do. She does not sit in an office waiting for people to come to her. She works with the children.
We have learned from her and she is learning from us. She has enhanced everything we do. She is learning about child development and the six areas of learning in the Foundation Stage. She is not a qualified childcarer, but as she is a qualified nurse I count her in the staff numbers just as you would a teacher.
We once had a session that started off with bandaging the teddies and the dolls, but in the end the children wanted to be bandaged themselves and pretended to have poorly arms and legs. When the parents came they wondered what had been happening!
The children had been putting the bandages on so they were falling off all over the place. But it gave us a chance to talk to them about hospitals.
Staff
When a new member of staff joins they have their induction and that includes explaining the nurse's role so everybody knows what she does.
She is here for the staff as well as the children. The staff can go to her at any time for health information and advice. I am sure people have taken personal issues to her as well, but it is in total confidence so that I don't know. She can listen, reassure and point out the routes that they can go.
How can we afford to employ a nurse? We just do. All our staff are qualified and you have to pay for them.
Whether other nurseries feel the same, I don't know, but I think it is important for us that she is on board.
