Nurse’s Smile Is Prescription for Success

It’s 10 a.m. on a typical school day, and Sally McAuley is tending to skinned knees, banged toes and aching tummies.

McAuley, a school nurse in the Garden Grove Unified School District for nearly 20 years, takes an extra moment to comfort each of her young patients with a bit of extra affection and attention as she administers first aid.

That dedication to her young patients, who know her as “Nurse Sally,” helped to earn the 58-year-old registered nurse the title of Orange County School Nurse of the Year last week, an honor bestowed by the Orange County School Nurse Organization.

Her prescription for success: using humor and smiles as an adjunct to the medical skills she has developed over the years.

“I always try to find humor on the job,” she said. “The kids are cute as buttons, even when they’re sick or hurt. I try not to be an old grump. . . . I tell them I’ll do everything I can to help them or get them help.”

McAuley said stomachaches and headaches are the complaints she hears most often, and she takes all of them seriously.

“For some of the kids, the medical attention they get at school is the only medical attention they’ve ever had,” she said.

McAuley recalls a little girl with such poor vision she could not read the top line of the eye chart. “We got her glasses, and her parents said it was the first time they had ever seen that child smile,” she said.

Like other school nurses in the Garden Grove district, McAuley divides her week among four campuses and spends one day on call for emergencies. Health aides on every elementary school campus help fill the gaps when nurses are not available.

“We get Sally one day a week,” said Sherry Couron, principal at Dr. Edward Russell Elementary School in Santa Ana. “We are in a very low socioeconomic area, and lots of health-care needs would go unaddressed without her.”

Couron said McAuley also acts as a resource person for school parents, faculty and staff, often offering help with personal matters as well as health care.

Seven-year-old Armando Contreras found his way to McAuley’s office this week complaining of a stomachache.

“The first thing I do is ask them if they’ve had breakfast,” McAuley said when diagnosing the common complaint. If the child has not eaten, the nurse gives the patient a bowl of cereal with milk. “Then I rule out if they need to go to the bathroom.”

But Armando needed neither of those. After resting on the nurse’s cot for a few minutes and getting a bit of specialized attention, Armando was sent back to his classroom.

“Sometimes its just about what’s going on in the class,” McAuley said with a smile.

McAuley now becomes Orange County’s nominee for the California School Nurse of the Year title awarded next year.