 Ever since she can remember, Pamela Trude, school nurse coordinator for Fauquier County Public Schools, wanted to become a nurse. She has pursued that innate childhood desire throughout her life, and now, after 30 years in the field, she has won the School Nurse Administrator of the Year award for the state of Virginia. She will receive the award Friday, Oct. 30, at the Virginia Association of School Nurses Annual Conference in Chantilly; as the state winner she will go on to compete at the national level.
A career in nursing was simply a given from the beginning for Ms. Trude. “I’ve always loved working with people, and I’ve always wanted to help people,” she said. “I knew nursing was for me.” Inspired by the nurturing nature of her mother, Ms. Trude started working at age 15 as a “tray girl” and volunteer pot washer at the local hospital in Monongahela, PA, where she was born and raised. She eventually became a nurse’s aide and continued to serve in that position during her summers home from college. That she went to college at all turned out to be a gift on her professional path. “My family was of modest means, and I knew it would be a burden to send me to college so I began looking at diploma nursing schools; it was a less expensive way to achieve my goal,” she said. During her senior year of high school, however, a family friend said, “You need to go to college” and made it possible for her to attend the Kittanning, PA, branch campus of Indiana University in Indiana, PA. Still on a tight college budget, she laughingly remembered many days of preparing soup and jello for meals. “That’s how badly I wanted to be a nurse,” she said. In 1974 Ms. Trude earned a bachelor of science in nursing from Indiana University; she did graduate work at California State University in California, PA, until she married her husband Charles, a graduate of the Naval Academy, in 1976 and moved from the area. As the wife of a Navy officer, Ms. Trude experienced the frequent moves associated with military life. “Nursing was the best field I could be in. I could get a job wherever we were,” she said. Ms. Trude began her 30-year, cross-country RN career as a clinical nurse with a medical surgical unit at University Hospital in Cleveland, OH. Returning to Monongahela, she worked as a psychiatric nurse consultant, coronary and intensive care staff nurse and in-service education instructor. Next stop was Corpus Christi, TX, where she was an instructor of pharmacology at Del Mar College and staff development coordinator at Memorial Medical Center. She spent three years at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, CA, working as head nurse of an orthopedic unit and as a staff nurse in an artificial kidney unit, followed by four years at Kennedy Hospital in New Jersey as medical surgical coordinator and nursing process coordinator. The birth of two children – daughter Heidi and son David – led to five years of nursing from a different perspective – as a nursing consultant for Trainex, as a day-care provider in her home and as a mom. When her daughter was born with a hole in her heart (ventricular septal defect), Ms. Trude stayed home to care for her. Surgery at the Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh corrected the problem, and Ms. Trude returned to work after a five-year hiatus to raise her children. In 1991 she began an 18-year association with Fauquier County Public Schools, working nearly 10 years as the school nurse at Grace Miller Elementary School and two years as the school nurse at Fauquier High School. Since December 2003 she has served as the school health coordinator for the school division, overseeing the coordinated school health services program and supervising 23 school health employees. Having worked in many different nursing environments, Ms. Trude finds school nursing unique. “In the school setting you are the captain of your ship,” she said. “You are the sole medical person with the responsibility of all the staff and students. In order to succeed you must be a very strong, self-confident, organized nurse. You don’t have the physician, staff and equipment to depend on like you do in all the other settings. Our nursing skills have to be top-notch because in an emergency who do you depend on? The school nurse.” Exhibiting a quiet, calm demeanor at seemingly all times, Ms. Trude still conveys an unbridled passion and enthusiasm for school health. “I love school nursing because I can utilize all the skills I have been taught. I can use my physical assessment skills, teaching abilities, counseling, communication, and to top it off, I can go home and say, ‘I made a difference in the lives I touched,’” she said. “[In school nursing] you do what you love, and you love what you do. I am continually learning something new.” Ms. Trude said that school nurses never know what might come through their doors. “It’s always exciting and challenging,” she said. Ms. Trude has proven to be a visionary in the FCPS health field. When she was first hired as a clinic aide in 1991, she was the only registered nurse in the school division. When she became the school health coordinator, she persistently appealed to the School Board for adequate funding to have a licensed nurse in every school, a vision which became reality in this current school year; her nursing staff now includes 16 registered nurses (RN’s) and seven licensed practical nurses (LPN’s). “I always said I wanted on my epitaph ‘She was responsible for getting licensed nurses in Fauquier County Public Schools,’” she said with a laugh. “I never gave up.” Envisioning FCPS as a heart-safe community, Ms. Trude advocated relentlessly for the placement of an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) in every school and key ancillary buildings. Through her research she came in contact with Rachel Moyer, who had established the Gregory Moyer Defibrillator Fund after her son died as a teen athlete at a school where no defibrillator was available. When Ms. Moyer visited a Fauquier County School Board meeting in May 2004 at Ms. Trude’s invitation, she donated an AED to the Board. Ms. Trude then worked with the Office of Emergency Services on a Rural Access Grant that enabled FCPS to have an AED in every school. In June 2009 the school division experienced its first save from a successful AED deployment – saving the life of a parent attending a school event. Ms. Trude said Ms. Moyer was the first one she called after the save occurred. “I wanted Rachel to know,” she said. “She started crying on the phone.” Ms. Trude realized the need for FCPS to become a site for the American Heart Association in order for the school division to certify and train staff and students in basic life support. FCPS is the only AHA school system site in the Commonwealth, and Ms. Trude and eight other instructors have certified over a thousand FCPS students and employees at no charge. Ms. Trude has been instrumental in many other wellness initiatives in FCPS, including the adoption of a district-wide school wellness policy, the establishment of the Working on Wellness (WOW) Award presented by the School Health Advisory Board, and the formation of school walking clubs and after-school biking programs. “One of the first things I did as school health coordinator was put together the school health manual. My nurses jokingly call it their Bible,” she said. She undertook the mammoth project because she wanted consistency within school health in Fauquier County. The manual details all aspects of school nursing including job description, time lines, forms, policies on the local and state level, etc. “School health practices seemed to be segmented before the manual,” she said. “I’ve told my nurses that we’re dynamic together and can make change together. We’re like the little engine that could, but instead of ‘I think I can,’ it’s ‘I know I can.’” Those who work closely with Ms. Trude recognize her total commitment to improving school health in Fauquier County Public Schools. Sally Murray, Fauquier County School Board representative to the School Health Advisory Board, said Ms. Trude is a “soft-spoken women [who] has a core of steel when it comes to improving all aspects of health in our schools.” It would be difficult to estimate how many people in the school division have benefitted from Ms. Trude’s instruction. While teaching health-related programs to bus drivers, school nutrition staff, teachers, instructional assistants, school administration, parents and students, she has continued to be a student herself. Ms. Trude graduated last year as a Fellow of the Virginia Coordinated School Health Leadership Institute upon completion of a two-year program. The Coordinated School Health Model is designed to assist schools in addressing health-related issues that affect learning. The model consists of eight components that encompass all aspects of school-community life: health education, health services, school environment, school nutrition, parent and community groups, mental health services, staff wellness and physical activity. In her limited leisure time Ms. Trude enjoys spending time with her family – husband Charles is a government engineer at Quantico Marine Corps Base; daughter Heidi, 25, is a French teacher at Skyline High School in Warren County; and son David, 22, is a student in the professional golf management program at Penn State University, who, she beams, recently scored his first hole in one. An avid Pittsburgh Steelers and Penguins fan, she also enjoys cooking, baking and traveling to Myrtle Beach and to her “home away from home” at Massanutten. Humbled by the state-level award that she learned in August she had won, Ms. Trude said she was “in disbelief” at the honor. The notification phone call came on a day her supervisor, Frank Finn, assistant superintendent of special education and student services, happened to be standing in her office. “I could not believe this was happening. Pam was speechless,” she said of herself. “I handed the phone to Frank because I was crying so hard. This is not a Pam Trude Award. This is a ‘Thank you, Fauquier County’ Award. I am where I am today because of all the wonderful people who have crossed my path. This award demonstrates that it truly does take the village to make a difference.” |
