ORLANDO, Fla. — The new school year is a little over a month away, and officials are calling on school nurses, or those with the skill sets, to join the team.

More than a thousand people are attending the National Association of Nurses Conference in Orlando, as speakers discuss the desperate need for more school nurses and the role they play when it comes to children's safety.

According to Dr. Stephen Sroka, one of the speakers at the conference, school nurses play a vital role when it comes to the health of a student, academic success and overall safety on campus.

He shared that building trusted relationships within the school is an important role for nurses and it's also a key component to getting ahead of violent behavior such as school shootings.

Sorka says that school nurses are trained with a special skill set to pick up on certain signs that determine when a child is in need both physically and mentally.

However, without trust, he says those signs could go unnoticed.

"A big study that came out last year showed that 94% of all kids who did ugly bad things, 94% shared that with somebody they trusted," said Sroka. "If the school nurse is a trusted person, they could be the first person to be told that something is going to happen."

Sroka added that building these relationships in the end not only helps in school but in the child's community as well.

Amy Ponce, a nurse for 32 years, said the conference was a great opportunity for nurses to come together and network while learning from other districts and nurses about best practices and work strategies on these different issues.

She says it's also a constant reminder that, though their job does come with healing scrapes and bruises, the duties of a school nurse reach far beyond just that.

"I had an incident where a student had a cardiac arrest on the football field during a school day," she said. "And to be able to be a part of that and to know that this young man is walking around and living and really being able to do his life, there's just things that you take away from it that you could never have anywhere else."

With the medical component aside, Ponce says school nurses also act as psychologists, social workers and much more for students, which often times is a lot more work than people expect when getting into the profession.

On top of that, she says the salary isn't really competitive compared to other medical avenues of nursing, which she believes is contributing to the shortage of school nurses.

"We have so many positions that are open," said Ponce. "I'll tell you for our county alone, I have 13 positions that I'm struggling to fight to keep," she said.

There are several school nurse positions open in Orange County — listed for the 2023-2024 school year, which starts August 10.