From Education to Vaccination

Nursing students staff campus H1N1 nasal spray clinics; dispel myths about the virus and the vaccine

Posted 10/28/09

McKee demonstrates a nasal spray vaccine.

Undergraduate students at Case Western Reserve University’s Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing (FPB) are no strangers to community service. In fact, each year they provide more than 20,000 hours of health care to Cleveland-area school children alone. Throughout their careers at FPB, they also engage in a number of public health projects across the country and around the world.

Their latest effort, however, is a little closer to home. Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) and pre-licensure Graduate Entry/New Career in Nursing students are administering the H1N1 influenza nasal spray vaccine to students, staff, and faculty on campus, in conjunction with the University Health Service.

“It’s a great opportunity for our nursing students to get real-world experience around a major public health issue,” says Irena L. Kenneley, PhD, APRN-BC, CIC, assistant professor at FPB and coordinator of the nursing student-run vaccination clinics.

The Case Western Reserve community took advantage of the opportunity to receive the free live nasal spray vaccinations, with more than 500 individuals taking part in the first few hours of the first clinic on Wednesday, Oct. 28.

BSN students Marisa Ross, Nick Frank, and Leigh Ann McKee compare notes from their first campus H1N1 nasal spray vaccine clinic.

The students expect that the number of patients at the remaining clinics will be even higher once word spreads about the quick and painless procedure.

“At first people don’t know what to expect,” says Marisa Ross, a junior from Pittsburgh, PA, during a clinic outside Frohring Auditorium. “We’re doing a lot of educating today.”

For every patient, a student nurse simply pumps one spray of the vaccine into each nostril. The virus contained in the vaccine is attenuated (weakened) so it will not cause illness.

Apart from being curious about the nasal spray vaccine, the student nurses report that paranoia about H1N1 seems  to have died down on campus, and what other students are talking about in terms of health and wellness is something about which nursing students are very much aware.

Nick Frank, a junior from Kent, Ohio, explains that their non-nursing friends come to them regularly for health information.

“Our friends do ask us [nursing students] a lot of questions,” he says. “Not just about H1N1, but about other health issues as well.”

The FPB nursing team after a successful first clinic.

Frank’s classmate, Leigh Ann McKee, also of Pittsburgh, was glad she had the chance to provide such an important service to the campus community.

“This has been a great experience in really educating the public,” she said. “We learned a lot about informing patients and helping them understand the issues at hand.”

According to McKee, after learning more about H1N1 and the nature of the nasal spray, many patients seemed very comfortable with receiving the vaccine and that even the patients who were uneasy about getting vaccinated were happy they had done so in the end.

“It’s over quickly,” she says. “They all seem very relieved and say ‘I can’t believe how simple that was.’”

Source: Case Western Reserve University

RELATED

• Read more about service learning at FPB

• Visit the BSN website