April 11, 2014 at 4:10 p.m.
Schmidt honored with state school nurse of the year award
Schmidt honored with state school nurse of the year award
Schmidt and her Athletic Training Service Team were in Madison to give a presentation at the Wisconsin Association of School Nurses Spring Conference.
After attending a few seminars, Schmidt was planning to head home to her family and the job she loves so much.
Little did she know that she was about to receive a distinguished honor - Wisconsin's Katheryn Etter School Nurse of the Year Award.
"I was completely surprised and caught off guard. I had no idea anything was going on. We were sitting at our table and they were starting to present the award, giving a short bio of the winner. In the beginning it was all pretty generic, but as it continued on the people sitting around me started to say, 'Hey, Kerri, that sounds like you,'" Schmidt said.
"As I was walking up to present, it still hadn't hit me, then all my kids and my future daughter-in-law and my spouse and (Superintendent) Kelli Jacobi and my team all walked out and I was just stunned. Usually, I can talk anybody's ear off, but at that moment all I could do was cry and hug everyone."
The school district worked hard to keep the award a surprise for Schmidt. A handful of her colleagues and her family knew about the honor in advance, but she was kept in the dark.
"Everyone helped out getting my kids there. I guess they were told to stay hidden until the announcement. You're at this conference and as you go from seminar to seminar, you're passing by everyone, but they all made sure I didn't run into anybody I wasn't supposed to. It feels great knowing everyone worked so hard to make sure I was surprised," Schmidt said. "It definitely worked."
Schmidt has been the district's nurse for the past 11 years. She said she's honored to be recognized as the state's best school nurses.
"I feel honored, just totally honored. There are a lot of school nurses in the state and everybody works hard," Schmidt said. "I just feel like Kelli Jacobi and the district are really recognizing the value of having a registered nurse in the district to help build relationships with families and bring that nursing knowledge to the district to help with all the chronic health issues that we have."
It was Jacobi who nominated Schmidt for the award.
"As I've been working with her this year, seeing the types of things that she's working on to benefit the district as a whole, (it) was amazing to me," Jacobi said. "She's working with the athletic training team to keep our athletes safe and well taken care of. If there are injuries, she's on top of it. She's on top of all of the training programs in the district, making sure our support staff and teachers know how to meet the needs of students. She's in charge of all the staff training in first aid and CPR, she's just so proactive in making she's taking care of all of our students."
"We're a pretty big school district and there's just one of her, so we want to make sure she knows how much we appreciate all she does for us, because she does so much," Jacobi added.
Schmidt now knows, and wants to make sure Jacobi, and everyone else in the district knows that she appreciates the nomination.
"Kelli Jacobi went out of her way to nominate me. I know that's a big, long process where you have to get recommendation letters and things like that. It's feels great to know you're appreciated like that," Schmidt said, adding that it is a complete team effort in trying to keep the kids in the district healthy and happy.
"I do a lot of education and training with staff members and because I'm the only nurse in our district. I really rely on the teachers, the educators, the paraprofessionals, the principals, and we have really good teams of people that work with our students that need help at school," she said.
"We put together emergency action plans and I lead the charge in those, but I really have awesome cooperation from the staff and I couldn't work with a better population of educators and support people and administrators."
"I'm trying to be that liaison between the school and the health care system and the parents and build those relationships and keep our students safe and healthy at school," she added.
Amazing is the word Jacobi came up with when asked to describe how it felt to see Schmidt win the award.
"It's amazing. She does such a fabulous job for our school district that it's wonderful to know that she knows how much we appreciate her. She does an amazing job and we are lucky to have her," Jacobi said.
It's been a busy couple of years for Schmidt as she's taken the lead on a concussion prevention initiative. She was also on the front lines when a respiratory and gastrointestinal illness ravaged the elementary schools in December. After all that hard work, being named school nurse of the year put everything in perspective.
"It does help make it all worthwhile. I wanted to make things better for my own children when I started in school health, as well as for all of the other children in the district," Schmidt said. "It's always about health and safety and doing what's right. It's about building relationships with families. Most of the time in many rural areas, the school nurse is the first avenue of health care for many people. Helping connect them with the physicians and the referrals and networking with our community partners is really what it's all about."
Marcus Nesemann may be reached at [email protected].
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