Cheshire Academy Nurse Wins National Award

The job of a boarding school nurse is much more than tending to cuts and bruises. At times it also involves acting as a surrogate parent for teen-age students whose families are hundreds of miles away.

That kind of dedication, and the long hours it involves, garnered one of two national awards for Debra Bond, Cheshire Academy’s director of health services. Called the “Achievement in School Health Excellence,” the award includes a $1,500 grant from Magnus Health of North Carolina.

Staff at the Academy’s Richmond Health Center sees about 60 students a day, along with a few faculty members, for a total number of more than 7,000 visits this school year. Bond said using the Magnus Health’s electronic medical charting system gives the staff much better information. “It’s from parents, not just doctors. We can communicate directly with parents,” she said.

It’s the Academy’s first year to use the Magnus system. Head Athletic Trainer Jennifer Tirillo nominated Bond for the award in January. “We work together and have daily conversations about coordinating care,” Tirillo said. “We have mutual respect for what each other does,” she added. Bond is a pediatric nurse practitioner who has worked at the Academy since 2001.

“Nurses are some of the hardest working medical professionals in the field,” Tirillo wrote in her nomination for Bond. “Her position is not a typical 9-to-5. In fact her shift truly never ends,” Tirillo noted.

More than 200 nominations were received for the grant award which allows the recipient to decide how to use the funds. In a ceremony during Cheshire Academy’s morning meeting on May 8, Bond was presented a crystal award trophy and a larger-than-life “check” containing the amount of the grant award.

Bond said she plans to use the grant funds to make life easier at the health center. She said ergonomic chairs for the staff and simple medical equipment for students, such as more thermometers, are potential grant purchases.