School Nurse Goes Beyond Band-Aids
If Midge Malsam were to start her career in school nursing over again, she would do one thing differently.
“I’d go to law school,” she says, half amused and half deadly serious about the idea.
After 23 years in school nursing, Malsam accepted on Wednesday the state School Nurse of the Year award. In that near quarter-century, Malsalm has seen the world of school nursing turned on its ear.
“People expect us still to be in the health room, waiting to put on Band-Aids,” she says. “We’re not.”
Educators, liaisons, record-keepers, screeners, and monitors of medication, they are.
“I always say we’re the best bargain in town. You get a social worker, health worker and counselor, all in one.”
Malsam encourages parents to contact the school nurses if they suspect their children need help with medical or related problems. Even though school nurses do less individual care than a generation ago, they can help find resources.
“That’s another thing the public doesn’t know. We do a lot of networking.”
Malsam, 64, heads up the eight part- and full-time Central Valley school nurses. She also spends half her time as the nurse for Sunrise Elementary.
When she retires next spring, Malsam says, she’ll volunteer and indulge interests that range from her grandchildren to her garden, from antiques to books.
Malsam, her husband, Frank, and their five children moved from Whitefish, Mont., to the Spokane Valley in 1973. He worked for Burlington Northern, and the kids were spread from fourth-grade through college. Malsam herself had done plenty of nursing by then. She’d worked in a clinic, a hospital. But with all her exposure to schools, she wanted to try school nursing.
Plus, there was the hard reality:
“I had to work. At one point we had four in college - three kids and me.”
Malsam finished a bachelor’s in nursing, and then went on to get her master’s at Whitworth College.
Triumphs from over the years include creating a wellness program for Central Valley staffers, and a kindergarten program that funneled extra help to children with various developmental problems. Also, Malsam helped build a program to teach school district employees how to guard against blood-borne pathogens, HIV and hepatitis B. She’s proud that the work and initial training was accomplished in one year.
“That was a lot to do. We didn’t know what we were doing when we started.”
Malsam shares credit for her success with others in the Central Valley community.
“We’re spread so thin. Everyone (I work with) is really a school nurse of the year, I think.”
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