Despite a recent policy to change that only allows students to stay at the nurse´s office for 15 minutes, the poor judgment of TCS students regarding the purpose of the nurse have the nurse’s hands pretty full, even though most of this visits are a waste of time.

Most of the students here at the Columbus School think that the nurse purpose is a place where  you can go to sleep when you are tired, and a perfect escape for the quiz you didn´t study for. This way of thinking have the school nurses wasting their time on pointless visits, when they should be focusing all of their time of the serious and important visits.

“The hardest thing for us, is that the students do not make good use of the school nurse; they use to come here and sleep, and escape from their classes, but it used to be worse. It has changed a lot because we have implemented a system where the student can only stay here for 15 minutes and then has to return to class, depending on the situation obviously.” Paula Lopez the school nurse said.

Lopez went on and explained on how the nurse used to get much more visits per day, but since they implemented this system the amount has reduced considerably. Also she told us how the little kids from Elementary school would actually plan their excuse outside the nurse, and they would also plan what story to tell to get ice or Vick pills because they like their flavor.

“ The nurse use to get up to 150 to 160 visits per day, but it has been taken down to 80-90 visits which is still a lot. Another problem is that since it is located on the elementary school, many little kids like to come just to get ice or Vick pills; also another problem is that the little kids wait till the beginning of school on Monday to get checked out on something that happened on Saturday, and that keeps us very busy,” Lopez added

But the small kids are not the only ones that make up excuses to get out of class, middle and high school students, make up any kind of excuse to get some sleep, and to miss the quiz that they would have failed.

“Mondays are not easy for anyone, especially after a heavy weekend, if you know what I’m sayin, and the nurse is the perfect place to power up,” Esteban Arango said.

The school needs to create a culture not just in students but also in parents regarding the nurses purpose, they need to implement a new way of thinking. “ Parents also need to stop sending their children to school when they are sick, if people uses the nurse correctly, it will all be easier,” Lopez added.