stephenwinbaum
Communications Coordinator
/ Moderator
May 19, 2005, 10:20 AM
Post #1 of 1
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Questions & Answers with Camp Nurse
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Now is the time to review health and wellness for the upcoming summer camp season. A professional camp nurse is a great asset in providing a health record to camp directors.
I contacted Tony Krall, chair of the clinical committee for the Association of Camp Nurses – ACN – for an interview on summer camp nursing.
Tony has been a nurse for 17 years – primarily in pediatrics. He is a retired member of the US Army Guard where he served for 22 years. He was deployed to the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and worked in an evacuation hospital.
He has volunteered as a camp nurse for the Minnesota National Guard Youth and Teen Camp at Camp Ripley Mn; and worked four years at Concordia Language Villages in Bemidji, Mn.
I reached him at his home in Eagan, Mn.
Q: Tell me about your role on as the ACN’s chair of the clinical committee.
A: My role is to provide education and information on clinical issues. At a recent ACA symposium, I detailed responses to situations where a camper or a staff is having a neurological problem - a head injury, a stroke, seizure - and looked at it from a wilderness setting. Many camps are in a non-urban setting - they may be an hour or more away from emergency health care.
Q: Have you ever been in a situation like that?
A: A camper was having an asthma attack at Camp Ripley. We were out in the sticks and the nearest hospital was well over an hour away. Managing people before you get them to emergency health care is very different than in the city where it takes five minutes for an ambulance to arrive and another fifteen minutes to ER.
Q: There must be an emotional and psychological component to wilderness health problems.
A: One of the big things in wilderness medicine is the psychological component, both with the injured person, and with the other staff members and kids. You're managing your client, but you're also managing emotional-psychological reactions of everybody in the situation.
Q: How does the nurse fit into the overall camp environment?
A: There may be a tendency to look at camp nurses as a set-aside piece, but in my experience, the more camp nurses integrate into the camp community – the better. It’s much easier to monitor what's going on with campers and staff, and to provide another viewpoint for the camp director about how camp is going.
Q: At camp - anything can happen - there could be a death. I don't want to be sensational, but it's something that a camp might have to deal with. Can you make a comment on that?
A: One of the best things that a camp can do is sit down and work out emergency procedures – review them and go back to the ACA standards. There's nothing magic about that, but the ACA standards provide for a base level of services.
Set aside time for the leadership staff – the camp director, senior counselors, waterfront staff, head of sports activities, food service, and the camp nurse – to do practice sessions. Figure out: 1) Who are the stake holders, 2) Who are the people who will be affected, 3) Who will be secondarily affected - parents, board of directors, and communities.
Q: Can you give me a brief bullet point description of the duties of a camp nurse?
A: • Manage medication
• Provide First Aid for injuries and illness
• Provide health care information for the camp director and staff
• Act as liaison between the camp, the campers, and their parents
• Be an integral part of the camp's crisis response and management team
• Participate in the entire camp experience
Q: Your last point is to share in the camp experience. Is there a summer camp experience that sticks out for you?
A: It’s interesting – there is a nurturing experience as a camp nurse. Once – at the National Guard Youth and Teen Camp – several kids were afraid to go down the rappelling tower. Imagine going down a 60-foot tower on a rope! I spent a lot of time talking with them; reassuring them that if they didn't want to go – that was okay. Several of the kids agreed that they wanted to do it, but were just really afraid. They agreed to go down if I went beside them. So, that’s what we did. I had an opportunity to work closely with kids to build confidence, to help them do something they never thought they could do.
Q: I guess the whole nurturing concept about men is misunderstood.
A: I really think it is. I’ve worked in many settings, especially in pediatrics. I don't see a difference in men and women nurses in providing emotional and psychological support. I would like to see more men get involved in camp nursing. I think male nurses bring some unique things to summer camp – a love of outdoors, being active, and an ability to encourage kids to try things that they haven't tried before.
Link here to reach Tony Krall
Read more about Camp Crisis Management
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