High schools everywhere have been spared no grief with the staff shortages nationwide and Lakewood High School was no exception. Lakewood has gone many months without any medical staff due to such shortages causing concern among students and staff. But as of early February, Lakewood has hired a health support tech.

“I’m really happy that we finally got someone. The pandemic really messed us up as far as the nurses because nurses kept quitting. I think we lost two or three because they were finding other jobs that had to do with health care,” principal Erin Savage said.

Senior Reilly Webb also shared her concerns about the lack of a school nurse.

“I think it’s an issue that we (didn’t) have a nurse because people like Ms. Miller can’t be here all the time and she doesn’t have the accessibility to have all the supplies that are given out by the school,” Webb said.

The new school health support tech is Keyara Clark. While Clark is not currently a registered nurse, she’s here for health support and any other needs that may arise with students.

“Everybody at some point needs help with something,” she said.  “If you all need anything like Band Aids or just stuff along the lines of simple things that don’t need much – anything worse than that I’ll need to call 911.”

For months teachers and staff have had to help during medical issues, but now that Lakewood has a health support tech anything that’s not hospital-worthy can be handled without an issue. Now parents and students’ concerns can be alleviated.

“It was difficult because we were having to do things that we are not necessarily trained to do. Anything major we would call 911 but if it was temperature, band aid, ice then we’d have to jump in and help out,” Savage said.

Webb, whose mother is an elementary school teacher, said she feels better now that there’s a nurse.

“I think it’s nice because now we have that security of knowing that there’s a nurse here to help and it takes the pressure off of all the teachers and staff that had to fill in for that position,” she said.