The Dragon Scale
Is There a Nurse in the House?Wednesday, March 31, 2010 By Sarah M.
The Lab School of Washington is pleased to have Nurse Judy Brinckerhoff as the school's nurse. Nurse Judy found out about the school years ago when she and her daughter Lucy had a interview for her to apply to Lab. After Lucy had spent the day at Lab visiting, she told her family that she loved Lab. To become the nurse at Lab, she sent in an resume, she interviewed with Ms. Schantz, and then had another interview with the Division Directors. Nurse Judy started working at The Lab School on December 7th, 2009. When asked what she thinks about Lab so far, she answered, "I love it. The students and staff are uniformly polite, friendly, and helpful." She said her expectations are to learn the names of the students and staff. She also began to write some policies for the school, checking the immunization status for students to make sure they are all in order, and posting information on the school's website. Her goal is to make sure the students and faculty are healthy and safe at school and she wants to try to keep it that way. Nurse Judy would also like to limit the number of days that students are absent. She wants to help or to give something back to the school because Lab helped her daughter Lucy graduate. Nurse Judy trained at Skidmore College. For some summers and her sophomore and junior years at college she was at the Nursing Department in New York City. Most of her clinical experience happened at Bellevue Hospitals. Before she came to Lab, she was a Navy Nurse Corps Officer for many years. Nurse Judy then was a stay-at-home mom for about a year with her two daughters but shortly after that she was a substitute nurse at the daughters' school. When asked what made her want to become a nurse, she says that her mom used to be a nurse and even though her mom said it was a hard career, Nurse Judy believed helping other people was something she wanted to do. On February 26th, 2010, there was a pepper spray incident that occurred on the Lab School of Washington's high school floor. Nurse Judy says that after she first heard what happened, she called the Poison Control Center. She says that they gave her some great guidelines for treatment. They said to her that for all exposed body parts, washing with soap and waters was needed and that people should drink water. They also told her that the spray will disappear in about an hour. Nurse Judy then told the teachers and students what she was told and she even gave a hand in helping people drink and wash their skin. The EMT's arrived and she still worked with students in her office. She says, "I feel so fortunate that we had good information and knew how to treat the students. Everyone was safe and that was a very good thing." |