Bamberg is a small town.

It's rural, it's country.

and very supportive community it's tight knit.

And you don't have Bamberg everywhere.

in this office here at the elementary school is our office that never quits.

They see kids back to back to back.

And I mean, it's like a little mini E.R.. You never know what's going to show up.

you don't plan to get sick.

You don't plan to get hurt.

Things happen.

And that's what, you know, school nurses, that's part just a piece of the job.

Kingston is my 11 year old, and he is my, challenge child, if you will.

So he's very smart.

Just very busy.

Always getting hurt, So I was at work, and I got a call from the school, which is not unusual because I get a lot of those.

So I picked up the phone.

They said he had gotten hurt and that he ran into a wall and that his hand looked pretty bad and that, you know, usually they'll just call and say he can, you know, just let you know that he got hurt and he goes back to class.

But that particular day, they said, we really think he needs to be seen by a doctor.

And so I'm like, okay, well I'm trying to like scramble through my head, like, I'm gonna have to call Bamberg family practice, see if they have an appointment.

And if they don't, I'm have to go all the way to Lexington.

But when I mentioned that the nurse there was like, oh, we can do a telehealth.

And so I was like, okay, sure.

You know, because I was familiar with that.

we got him saying within five minutes of mom arriving at the school, And what I do with us being able to offer, you know, for them to come over for X-rays, we identify their chart and put a pop up for our front office staff that says patients coming in for an X-ray we went straight back to the X-ray.

We had to wait in the waiting room.

It was amazing.

So we were able to view the X-rays, and see that there was no acute injury that needed to be seen by ortho.

We're able to put him in a little splint just for comfort for a few days, she was going to actually write him out for that day.

And he was like, no, I want to go back to school.

So I took in right at the school and came back to work.

I think we took about an hour Incorporating telehealth visits.

not hard.

And it really just kind of backbones on to what we do.

each school has their own laptop for school based telehealth.

And then we have peripherals.

So we have a otoscope, a stethoscope, a general exam camera.

So Brenna would be able to see into their ears, throat, listen to their heart and lung sounds, we'll do lots of earaches, especially at our primary school.

That's what our nurses will tell you.

They see a lot of earache, complaints.

Lots of sore throat.

So acute visits, they could have flu, Covid, maybe a strip.

Could just be their allergies are acting up.

we also emphasized that it's not taken away from their, like, primary care doctor, that this is just like an additional resource.

So if they are a patient at Bamberg Family Practice, then Bretta would just give the notes from their visit to their doctor, we do a lot of acute visits, illnesses.

We do do behavioral health as well.

So anxiety and depression is a very, very common thing.

We also see patients for and treat.

Lately our, most popular thing has been a little bit of ortho injuries.

our ortho options here.

You know, a lot of people end up going to the E.R.

with injuries like this.

And I think any of our E.R.

people can vouch right now that they are overrun.

for a specific pediatric ortho, Our kids have to travel to Columbia or Charleston, which is almost an hour.

And those visits can be 2 to 3 days later, before they're getting casted or splinted.

So we do what we can on our side to stabilize them and get them more comfortable until they're able to get to those appointments if they're needed.

Or we do the visits and they, they're not necessary in a lot of cases to keep them from making that travel and time off of work.

And time out of school.

my boss is flexible and my schedule is flexible, but not everybody has that luxury.

the school, having that I think is very convenient and helps parents out a lot.

So they don't have to miss work.

Because some parents are hourly workers and they only have so much PTO, and if they miss too much time from work, you know, and they're hourly, that could be a difference between, them being able to pay the light bill.

taking off of work is I mean, it's a huge thing and it can be debilitating for a family.

And so if we can provide some of those services so that parents don't have to worry about getting off work, you know, they can be on the visit with us, you know, with just a cell phone.

They don't have to have a computer.

And even if not, they have no trouble, you know, calling and touching base with a parent, you know, after the visits over, if something happens and they couldn't get on right, then, you know, they still discuss that treatment plan with the parent before anything is decided.

in our school system, there are kids that won't get health care other than through this.

So getting that population of children who don't have a primary care or a pediatrician that take care of them, that, you know, they get care just like any other child would, but they get to do it from the convenience of of school.

And it's not a burden on the family.