Hey, everybody. I'm Connor. That's Doug, and this
is the Bethel School District Presents podcast, and
we have a fantastic show for you today.
We do. Joining us today is our new
nurse administrator, Angela Radonsky. Angela, this is the
first time we've met in person, so we're
gonna have a little get to know you
quiz to get us started. And since you
don't know Connor or I, we're gonna answer
the questions as well. So are you ready
for this, Connor? Yes. Let's go. Okay. Question
1, and I will answer these first. We'll
go to Connor, give you a chance to
think, Angela, and then we'll come over to
you.
Number 1, what is your go to coffee
order? For me, it's a cappuccino. Every time.
My order when it's cold out is an
Americano, hot Americano. When it's hot out, it's
an iced Americano. Wow. That makes me feel
a little bit,
high maintenance here because it depends on where
I'm going and what the weather is and
what time of day it is. But my
general coffee order in the morning
would be a white chocolate caramel, sugar free,
fat free, and an extra shot. Oh, you're
fancy. Sounds fantastic.
Now I sound like Yeah. I don't know,
a little bougie. Very bougie.
I love it. Question 2, what do you
listen to on your daily commute to work?
This year, I'm listening to a lot of
podcasts. I have a personal finance podcast that
I listen to, and I have a travel
podcast, which I'll name drop Rick Steves Travel.
Classic, and he's still putting out great content
on podcasts. Yeah. Shout out Rick Steves. I
have been listening to audiobooks.
Love it. When my son is in the
car on the way to drop him off
at school or daycare, I listen to worship
music because we gotta start the morning off
right. And then as soon as he gets
dropped off, I am listening to podcasts, and
it is crime junkie or anatomy of murder,
which he can't listen to. You're getting the
full spectrum of 1 Oh, really? Do I
just flip straight from 1 to the other?
That's awesome. What a start to the day.
Number 3, what is the last movie you
watched or TV show that you binged? Now
for me, when I just finished last night,
I texted you about Connor was there's something
in the barn and it is a Norwegian
Christmas
horror
comedy,
the likes of which you've never seen. Yeah.
I the screen grabs alone really intrigued and
frightened me.
So I'm gonna have to check that one
out too. I recently watched for, like, the
100th time David Fincher's Zodiac.
Such a good movie. So scary. Elspeth.
I watched all of the first season of
Elspeth, and that was kind of quirky and
fun. I don't know that one. Do you
know that one? No. That's not one that's
in my do you wanna give us a
brief synopsis?
It is about a lady who is an
attorney, and she sent into a police
environment
to help them. But really what she's doing
is watching to see where there's corruption.
And she's kind of quirky and funny and
but it's fun. I love it. We definitely
have a true crime thing going on in
this episode.
Alright. Next question. Do you have any hobbies?
And I'm gonna go with bird watching. I
started bird watching back in 20 12.
This morning, I saw a Bewick's Wren on
my morning walk with pancake, the wonder dog.
Have you seen the big year? I have
Jack Black, Steve Martin,
and Owen Wilson. Yes. Yes. I've seen that
a couple of times. That's actually one of
the movies that got me into birding in
the
first place. So shout out to The Big
Ear. I was wondering.
I'm going to choose I have so many.
I'm gonna choose
chicken farming.
Chicken. Wow. Yeah. So we live in the
city limits of Tacoma, so you have to
be very cautious and know what the laws
are. Yeah. But you can actually have chickens
while you live within the city limits of
Tacoma. So I have chickens and one duck
who thinks it's a chicken.
And so
but yeah. So we have chickens, and I
find them very calming and enjoyable. And do
all your friends ask for free eggs all
the time? Actually, they don't. They don't. Oh.
Which is interesting because I have between 1
6 eggs every single day. Oh, wow. But
I do bring them into coworkers sometimes. Sometimes.
Oh, that's nice. It's like, hey. Thanks for
doing me a solid. Here's a dozen eggs.
Nothing wrong with that. I need to do
you a favor sometimes. Alright.
So, Angela, we've gone through those questions. I
feel like we know you a whole lot
better now. But since we haven't met before
and since we didn't bother to ask you
ahead of time, we found what we can
only assume is your LinkedIn profile.
If this is you, you have a pretty
impressive nursing history, including teaching other nurses at
Bates and working as an RN at Franklin
Pierce School District and MultiCare. So first, is
any of that true?
And if so, I guess either way,
what got you into nursing in the first
place? No. It's all lies. Yes. All of
it is true.
I do have a pretty lengthy experience,
in health care in general. I would say
the thing that
brought me to nursing was actually an accident.
I had young children. I needed a job.
At the time, one of my sister in
laws reached out to me. She said, hey.
There's this extended care facility that's hiring. You
don't have to have any experience. This is
what you're doing. I'm like, that sounds like
taking care of children. I can do that.
I went and applied, got the job. She
left. She decided she didn't like the job.
I stayed, loved it. Then one of her
other sisters decided she wanted to go to
nursing school, asked me if I'd join her.
I was like, yeah. That sounds like a
great idea. I love what I'm doing.
So
I went,
and I love it. And I've I've just
never looked back. I love taking care of
other people's needs when they're vulnerable
and being able to make a difference. Absolutely.
Yeah. That's a good reason to wanna be
a nurse. Yeah. So what specifically then got
you into working at schools?
Well, I think like so many other people,
one of the things that got me into
working at schools is really looking for something
that was going to be family friendly. I
was
fostering at the time, so we had 6
children in the house. They were ages 4
and under,
and I needed something that would work with
day cares and, you know, school schedules and
stuff like that. So I started looking for
something different than the urgent cares that I
was working in at the time,
and this seemed like a good
a good place to start. I really like
the fact that we can be preemptive in
making a difference in children's lives and their
health and then making an impact on our
communities
versus waiting until somebody's in the hospital and
trying to teach them how to,
react so we can be proactive in a
school system instead of reactive later on with
adults. Yeah. And there's a lot of places
you can be a nurse. You can be
a nurse at a hospital. You can be
a nurse anywhere.
Can you give us a day to day
breakdown of what a school nurses' day is
like? Well, I wish there was one answer,
but there really isn't. As a school nurse,
you always have to be kind of on
your toes and expecting that anything could happen.
But in general, I would say that, you
know, they they barely hit the door before
somebody's asking for something,
whether that be parents that have questions about
the care of their students, students that maybe
have diabetic care needs,
or maybe they are having an asthma attack.
There's questions about educating staff members because they
also take care of that piece where they
educate staff members about EpiPen and inhalers and
medications.
They prepare for field trips. So there's lots
of different ways that could look. Yeah. Even
just hearing you say all that seems like
an overwhelming kind of job takes a real
special person to to fill that role. And
we have a number of very special folks,
an amazing team of nurses and health clerks
that help students day in and day out.
And, Angela, you're now the person leading that
team.
So what role do you play in, in
the school day? I like to think that
my primary role is to support our nurses
that are in the schools. You know, they're
the boots on the ground, and so I
really do depend on them to re you
know, reach out to me and let me
know what they need and how I can
support them.
The biggest role I currently have, I would
say, in that support piece is finding out,
what they need and how to make that
happen so they feel supported and can get
their jobs done. That includes a lot of
staffing.
So I would say that's probably the biggest
piece of the support is to do staffing,
make sure that there's somebody at every school
to take care of our students. And we
I mean, everybody has a life outside of
school, so our nurses need to be able
to know that they can also take care
of their duties
and that the students are well taken care
of. And, Angela, it's obvious that you're passionate
about your work, so this may not be
an easy answer for you. But what is
your favorite part about being a nurse? That's
actually a pretty easy answer for me. I
just love the positive impact that myself and
our nurses, all of health care can provide
to our communities. I love that impact.
We do lots of things that impact the
community beyond our students because we do, you
know, immunization clinics. We have dental screenings. We
do vision and hearing, and those are things
that have a ripple effect throughout the community.
It's not just about our students, and our
nurses are the ones that organize those. They're
the ones that say, you know,
these are the dates that I have available.
They're the ones that reach out to the,
teachers, and they make sure that there is
a schedule for the day. They're the ones
that go and they talk to all the
students while they're actually doing the screenings. They
do all of that. Well, school starts next
week. And as parents finish up getting their
students ready for the 1st day, what's the
biggest question you're getting from parents? Maybe we
can get that answer out there and help
folks, with the podcast here. Most parents are
asking me
what they need to bring in for the
1st day if they have students that have
medical needs.
And so the answer to that is,
of course, medication that's in an original
container that is well labeled and unexpired,
a doctor's order
that goes with that, and it has to
match.
And then if a student requires some kind
of care plan to go with that from
the doctor, so, like, a seizure care plan
and asthma action plan, things like that, we
need those preferably before, like, 3 or 4
days before. Our nurses are actually already hitting
the doors. They're in the health rooms already
trying to prepare.
And so as soon as possible is always
best.
And then, that also gives our nurses time
to do their individual health care plans for
the students because they have to have those
in place as well-to-get
to school.
And then the other thing that parents aren't
really asking about very much, but one thing
that I really wish more parents would ask
about is immunizations
because those really do need to be set
up for
attendance.
It is a state law that we have
to have something in place for the 1st
day of attendance,
And we have opportunities for immunizations,
for athletic
physicals, and also for refilled prescriptions,
through our school based health centers. And then
there's also some other resources. Some of them
can be found on our website. Absolutely. And
those school based health centers at Graham Kapowson
High School and Bethel Middle School and opening
very soon at Spanaway Middle School. So that
those are great resource for our community. So
that's all our serious questions today. But finally,
you know, you've already mentioned the chickens, so
that's which is pretty surprising, but what's something
else about you that might surprise people that
are getting to know you?
I ride quads.
Alright. Maybe that might. It might.
I don't know because I'm like, I don't
know what the impression is that people get
of me, so it makes it hard to
determine what is going to surprise somebody. That's
true. So I'm actually pretty country. I would
prefer to walk around in bare feet and
a pair of sweats
and, maybe get on a quad.
I have a very large vehicle that I
like to drive, which people are fairly surprised
by, but that's it. I'm I'm I'm kinda
country. You're gonna fit in just fine.
I would I would say that's it. Well,
let's dig in a little bit. I know
some other folks that ride quads out here.
What's your favorite place to go quad quadting?
Quad. To ride a quad? Go riding. We
just say go riding. Yeah. Yeah. See, I
don't ride the Not a quad or not.
Quad or not. Ride the quads.
We really enjoy Sand Lake.
Okay. Where's that at? The, that is down
in Oregon. We we go as a family.
We have a toy hauler. Do you know
what a toy hauler is? I imagine, like,
a little wagon. Bucket you put your toys
in? No. And that's why I asked. So
a toy hauler is actually
like a trailer except for the whole back
end flops open, and you drive your quads
or your,
motorcycles into it. It has, like, a little
garage space. Oh, that's cool. And then when
you park,
then you would unload all your gear and
all your whatever vehicles you took with you
because we also have a sand rail, and
then it has bunk beds that go
down into the Oh, wow. Garage space. And
then it has, like, a kitchen, and it
has a full bathroom, including a shower that's
tall enough for my 6 foot 4 husband.
I know you guys aren't messing around. Yeah.
No. Very serious, obviously. You just don't know
how long you're gonna have to stay out
there. So Well, Angela Radonsky, our new nurse
administrator, thank you so much for joining us
on the podcast this week. Thank you for
having me. It was nice meeting you both.
Thank you again, Angela. Pleasure to meet you
and join us next week where we are
gonna be joined by our director of security,
Brian Streleski, along with Pierce County Deputy, Vicki
Morrison.
We'll see you then everybody. Thanks for listening.