When Elaine Conant, a school nurse at Bonny Eagle High School, nominated Susan Dunn for the Maine School Nurse of the Year award, she wrote that as Dunn’s colleague, she had watched Dunn “find her voice.”
Dunn, a resident of Buxton, is a nurse in Bonny Eagle’s three elementary schools – Edna Libby, Steep Falls and George E. Jack. Dunn, a registered nurse, works with two licensed practical nurses who rotate regularly among the three schools.
Conant said when she first met her, Dunn was soft-spoken. Through the years, she said, she learned Dunn “had a lot to offer. To me she is a role model, a caring professional, and someone who is quite knowledgeable.”
Now, as the Maine Association of School Nurses School Nurse of the Year, she will be honored this spring during a Blaine House tea for school nurses. Dunn said she was “honored and flattered” to win the award last October.
Dunn began working for the Bonny Eagle school district 22 years ago, in 1994. Previously Dunn had worked as a hospital nurse, and spent several years as a community health nurse, she said.
Dunn said because she makes a lot of decisions independently in her work as a school nurse, the position has helped her become more confident in her skills as a leader and a practitioner. As well, she credits her leadership role as secretary of the school nurse association as work that helped her “find her voice.”
But, Dunn said, the most rewarding part of being a school nurse “being part of the school community and working with children.”
Ginny Day, principal at Edna Libby Elementary School, said Dunn is “efficient, professional and yet very approachable by students.”
Day said Dunn is a professional in that she is “checking on a medical condition – she’s very knowledgeable about diabetes and other conditions – but she’s also sympathetic to a student who needs a Band-Aid and assurance that the scratch is going to be OK.”
Dunn is a team player who will “step up and help in any situation,” Day said. “She’s a wonderful person that’s part of our school family.”
Dunn is active in the nursing and educational community. Dunn joined the Maine Association of School Nurses as a board member in 2009, and took on the role of secretary in 2011. The association works to improve school health services and advocate for school nurses around the state.
Dunn also teaches CPR certification classes in the community, and helps coordinate the school’s “backpack food program,” a statewide initiative that fills backpacks with donated food and gives them to needy children to take home on Fridays, she said.
Dunn plays 3-on-3 basketball in South Portland with the Maine Senior Women’s Basketball league.
Dunn said she “likes to advocate for wellness, especially for students, by being a good example of wellness myself.”
Susan Dunn, center, was nominated by Elaine Conant, left, for the School Nurse of the Year award, which she won. At right, Charles deSieyes, school physician for the School Administrative District 6, and in back, Dunn’s husband, James Dunn, stand with Dunn after she accepted her award in October. Send questions/comments to the editors.
