COVID Lessons Learned: From Response to Recovery

The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on all school staff. As a consequence of their role as frontline responders, school nurses experienced significant trauma and moral injury. The Washington State School Nurse Corps debriefed the pandemic response to plan for future disasters. In the process, they discovered that much of the literature reflects the school nurse's role in the early phase of disaster response. There is little attention given to recovery processes and few current sources could be found on the role of nursing in debriefing. School nurses could benefit from and play an important role in supporting recovery, particularly debriefing, for their school communities.