The nursing instinct was evident in childhood for Soldan International Studies High School nurse Constance Williams, RN BSN.
“I had an aunt that thought I should be a nurse because I was always trying to take care of the dog, my dolls and other relatives’ little minor ‘boops’ and ‘oops,’” Williams said.
Williams has a 41-year career in nursing, starting at the old St. Louis City Hospital #1, Yeatman-Union Sarah Health Center, Grace Hill Consolidated Healthcare Center, St. Luke’s Hospital and since 1984 for St. Louis Public Schools. Williams also worked summers for several years in the National Youth Sports Program for children at St. Louis Community College at Forest Park.
Initially, Williams was interested in becoming a stenographer, until aptitude testing revealed high scores in teaching, health care and in science. She started her SLPS career as a full-time substitute nurse, covering as many as six schools at a time. At Soldan, Williams works at the same high school she attended and where she graduated. The magnet school has approximately 1,000 students with pupils and staff representing 54 different nations.
Student health conditions are more complex these days, Williams said, from simple first aid, managing medications for chronic illnesses to caring for students with specialized medical needs.
“They are saving babies earlier and earlier now and they are mainstreaming everyone, so you are getting more kids with asthma, diabetes,” Williams said.
“Medical technology is finding things earlier, and we are taking care of it and those people are living longer. I don’t have any, but we have people coming into school now with trachs [tracheotomy tubes], breathing tubes, feeding tubes – I guess more limiting handicaps.”
Because of health care affordability issues, Williams said school nurses sometimes function as a major point of contact for students as well as some staff and parents, referring to outside organizations that can help with allergy covers for bedding to cut down on missed school and emergency room visits for asthma, for example, or just closing the door and offering a non-judgmental ear.
“Sometimes it’s not necessarily a physical illness, but emotional or just having someone to talk to,” Williams said. “The cost of keeping schools open, people not working, the tax base is drying up, so you are getting larger schools and people with more health conditions and they may need that 15-20 minutes of attention.”
From nutrition education to bringing in health speakers, Williams said “school nursing has something to going on with almost everything that goes on in the school because if the child is not feeling well, then he can’t learn because his mind can’t concentrate on what’s going on in the classroom.”
Williams has a bachelor of science in nursing from Saint Louis University and an associate’s degree in nursing and biology from St. Louis Community College at Forest Park.
She volunteers for National Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse TREND program for high school students.
She and her husband, Hubert J. Williams, have three daughters, two sons and nine grandchildren. Two of her daughters are also RNs.
What she loves most about nursing is getting to know the students and watching them mature and grow.
“You see them mature and you touch their lives and sometimes you don’t realize that you’ve touched their lives until you see them years later at the store and they walk up to you,” Williams said.
And this school nurse is not shy about channeling her inner “truancy officer” to encourage a student back into the classroom.
“When I would go to the mall and I would see kids out and I would fuss because I had not seen them at school, and I would check the attendance,” Williams said. “My husband would ask, ‘Aren’t you scared to talk to that bib burly boy?’ And I would go, ‘He looks scary but he is really a sweetie when you get to know him and talk to him and get past the look of him trying to be bad.’”
