Career Resources for School Nursing

Welcome! This guide includes links to resources for school nursing students on the job search, professional organizations, professional development, and how to do research once you are a practitioner in a school nurse position.

Some resources here are intended to be used in particular ways for these purposes, so please read instructions carefully.

Need help? Contact me, your librarian, using the information in the box to the left!

These resources will provide you general information on conducting a job search, applying, and interviewing.

Searching the open web and professional organization websites is usually the best way to find out more general information about them. Listed are websites for a few key organizations:

You can also learn more about these organizations' work and priorities by looking at the journals and newsletters they produce, which you can often find in the library collections. Investigate the sites linked above for the titles of the organizations' publications, and then search for them in the Libraries' Journal Finder to see if we have access:

When you find a publication in the Journal Finder, click on its title to view more information. In this screen, any of the links under View Online should take you to issues of the journal (check the text beneath each link to see what dates are covered). You can then browse or search within the journal to get a sense of its scope.

You can search for information about the profession of school nursing in our library databases. In the databases ERIC and CINAHL below, try searching for "school nurse" (with the quotes) in one box, and job or career in another, to find articles about the state of the profession, job satisfaction, and more.

You can also frequently find professional development opportunities through professional organizations, such as those listed in the box above.

Once you are employed as a school nurse, there may be many instances where you want to do research on best practices, programs, interventions, and other elements on your work. This can be challenging, however, as being a school employee often affords you less access to the high-quality research resources that you have had available as a student in higher education.

There are, however, a few methods you can use to get access to research resources freely. The database ERIC is freely available in a different format through the Department of Education, and the health sciences database PubMed can also be freely accessed and searched. Use the links below to access the free versions of these databases:

Each of these databases has an option to search specifically for research resources that are freely available to everyone.

• In ERIC: Before searching for your topic, check the box at the bottom of the screen that says "Full text available on ERIC."
• In PubMed: After searching for your topic, check the box on the left side of the results screen that says "Free full text."