By Courtney Cole/ Delta Staff Writer 

When it comes to the flu Missouri Valley college Nursing Students are there to help. This Flu season the Nursing students at the college are helping out the community of Saline County by helping give flu shots to anyone in the need of one. 

Tara Brewer, Administrator at the Saline County Health Department talks about how the Missouri Valley Colleges nursing program gets to shadow their clinics. Brewer thinks due to COVID-19, the flu vaccine will be more notable and hope for more people to come and get the shot. Not only Brewer but the Saline County Health Department are happy to have the additional help from the nursing students while working strictly for COVID-19 and continue to do so.

 “Having entities such as SCHD and MVC working together is very important,” said Brewer. “I encourage students to continue building  relationships within your community.”   

Roberta Griffitt, Assistant Professor of Nursing said:  “New graduate nurses need to be armed with information about health across the continuum, which includes not only acute care but all the community-based health care an individual may access throughout the lifetime, from Public Health, WIC (Women’s, Infants & Children’s Health Services), school-based nursing, primary care, home health/hospice, long-term care, and other post-acute services. Nearly half of all nurses work in community-based locations, so it’s important that nursing students are exposed to as many opportunities to learn about all aspects of nursing.” 

Part of being a nurse is keeping a big part of the population as healthy as possible, providing different options for the community such as pop up drive thru flu clinic is a good way to provide and give vaccines in a quicker way to a large number of civilians.  

Christina Bersano, President of the Student Nurse Association at Missouri Valley College says that the nursing program usually deals with the screening at Marshall High School but due to it being canceled they received the opportunity to help with the Saline County Health Department. 

The nursing students enjoyed having the on hand experience which was always beneficial to expand their knowledge as well as skills. By giving real life experiences and opportunities with the community and the people of it. 

How the drive thru was set they had an entrance and an exit where people could drive up and receive their vaccinations. Everything such as the needles and vaccines were already set. While the Saline County Health Department team was gathering peoples information, the nursing students were giving the vaccines. They had flu  vaccines for all types of people, even young children. 

It is very important especially now to come together as a community and that prevention is a cause that people can get behind. Bersano explains how working with the Saline County Health Department was a wonderful experience and they are a great crew, who works hard for Saline County. 

“The gold nugget of wisdom always instilled in us as nurses is to ‘always look at the bigger picture.’ said Bersano. “Our professor Roberta Griffitt said this: ‘Coming together in community and being an advocate for a healthier community is the bigger picture.’”