ACA Home Forums The worst nursing staff ever

So this summer I returned to the same camp for a 3rd year. After working at the same camp for 3 years, I started to notice some issues with my camp. Most of which are minor and I dont mean to put down the camp in any way, I think that the camp I work at is an amazing camp and I believe it to be one of the best day camps out there. There is one issue however that needs to be addressed right away and it is one that you would think would not be a problem and that is the nursing staff. I believe that our nursing staff is absolutely horrible. So here is a quick overview of our nursing staff: We have one mobile medic who is EMT Certified and he is a great guy and very good at his job. He essentially drives around and takes care of all the booboos and scrapes. If there is anything beyond that, he takes them to the nurses which is where the problem begins. There are 3 nurses and they are always in a bad mood and do not administer proper care. There was one instance where a fellow co-worker cut his finger open pretty well. The nurses told him that it was fine and he only needed a band-aid...well that night it was still bleeding and he had to go to the hospital and receive multiple stitches. There was multiple incidents where a child would fall and be taken to the nurse for a concussion analysis only to be told that the child was fine and was able to go back to their activity with no analysis completed. There was one incident that involved me and a child. I work as an aftercare counselor and one day, when camp was over, I was taking a 6 year old kid to the nurses office to see if the nurses were still around and could provide a band-aid. Once we arrived at the office, the nurses rudely asked "What do you want??" I asked if we could please get a band-aid and she replied in a nasty tone "We are not working anymore you cant have a band-aid!" This got me angry and I looked at the kid and said to him "Sorry, the nurses want you to bleed to death" and I had to walk the kid to the other side of camp to get a band-aid and by the time we got there, there was a ton of blood covering his leg. Many of my kids have complained about how lazy the nurses are and it makes me upset that they dont even trust the nurses.


I hope that I am the only one experiencing this problem. Please let me know what you guys think of this.

Wow-- the camp nurses suck. I experienced similar issues at 2 of the camps I worked at. At one of the camps, after the first week of camp, we only had camp nurses on the camp site part time-- yes you read that right only part time. The nurses would be there from morning med distribution until the night med distribution-- no overnight coverage what so ever. That got me mad because the last week of camp, one of my campers had a diabetic emerency ( very low blood sugar) and the program director was pissed she had to be called in to help and somehow it was me and my co-counselors fault that my camper had low blood sugar even though he seemed fine and was showing no symptoms until later at night.

At another camp I worked at, our camp nurse was around 80 and could not do anything and she would always be taking naps. Again we had a camper with diabetes later at night and she went to bed. She had the door locked to her office and we had to get the camp director to get he master keys to open the door so we could wake her up-- I was banging on the door and was screaming for her to wake up and she was in bed at 9:30 PM. Come on really? What staff members who are supposed to be on duty goes to bed that early espically when you take 5 naps a day?

In my experience the nurses I have worked with have been okay. They are either there so that their kids can go to camp for free, or they are friends of the owners. Many of them are school nurses who have the summer free. A lot of camps have a hard time attracting a nurse who is willing to do the job, because the pay is nothing compared to what they make in a clinical setting. Many camps simply have to take whatever they can get.

There has to be a way to get better nurses as camps should not feel like they have to "settle" for sub par nurses, as campers and staff deserve quality care in case of an emergency or even for routine stuff.

Some people just don't care.

I know I think finding high quality nurses has to do with the pay-- alot of nurses could work less hours lets say in a doctors office or in a hospital, and get more money. Its hard to settle for less pay at a summer camp if you are a new nurse and have to pay off student loans, pay for rent/morgagae and other things called life. Thats why some camps can only get nurses who are retired or have a spouse to help pay the bills so they dont have to depend on a camp job to pay the bills. But then if a nurse is good they may not be allowed to take 2 months or more to work at a camp because their real world nurse jobs need them more

Keep in mind that this is a Day Camp and not an Overnight camp so the hours are the same that the nurses would work during the school year, if not, less hours. However, I did notice, they improved very much so I very well could've just caught them at a bad time. They did a great job this summer from what I saw. I would have loved to see if it was caused by something the Director did or said or by an internal cause. Either way, this summer was definitely an improvement and I am much happier that they are finally acting in a more professional manner as camp nurses should.