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You can play a vital role in ensuring nursing is perceived correctly by promoting the following:

• Intellectual challenge of nursing
• High degree of science and technology
• Variety of work opportunities
• Opportunity for career progression
• Idea of helping people and ability to make a difference

Depending on the age of the group there are a variety of materials that can be used in doing recruitment into nursing careers presentations.  The following ideas are suggestions and may be embellished or revised according to your comfort and presentation style.  Be creative!  Present nursing as an exciting and rewarding.

Elementary Schools (4th -5th grades)

• Interactive presentations work well such as a short skit.  Click here for a suggested format for a skit.
• If you have 3-4 nurses who can go along, have each dress in a different nursing uniform such as military fatigues, scrub suit, business attire, and lab coat.  Have students guess which one is the nurse.  Then have each tell a little about what their job is like and why they like it.
• Coloring sheets that describe nursing careers are available for a fee from Pronurse Press.  Check out Melodie Chenevert’s web site at http://www.pronurse.com for further information.  The SC CIC project, in cooperation with the School-to-Work Coordinators in the Midlands area, is developing a coloring sheet that can be copied by your organization for distribution.
• The University of South Carolina College of Nursing has this Future Nurse’s Kids Club Web site that provides very basic information on nursing careers.  The web site is accessed at http://www.sc.edu/nursing/   In order to maintain a database on the kids that have expressed a desire in nursing, we have prepared postcards for kids to take home to parents and get permission to join the Kids Club and access our web site.  The postcards can be duplicated and should be sent by the student to:  Kristen Montgomery, University of South Carolina, College of Nursing, 1601 Greene St., Columbia, SC 29208.  Once we receive the card we will send them a personalized certificate and a few free gifts for their enrollment.  Periodically throughout the year our office sends a followup postcard to the students reminding them to continue to consider nursing as a career.

• A video presentation and pamphlet produced by the National Student Nurses Association (NSNA) called “Nursing: The Ultimate Adventure” is available for purchase. For information call the NSNA office at (718)210-0705, by faxing to (718)210-0710, or emailing nsna@nsna.org   The publication page of NSNA's web site is http://www.nsna.org/pubs/index.asp   The video (10 minutes) is very fast-paced, interesting, stresses diversity, and covers a lot of territory on career options.  
• The SC Healthcare Recruitment and Retention Center has some materials available on nursing that can be used as handouts.  A Nursing fact sheet  and fact sheets on financial aid and salary information are available.
• A question and answer session after the video works well with this age group.
• Student nurses from a local college are well received by the students and gives the student nurse an opportunity to get involved in professional development activities.
• It is important to stress that students should take the necessary math and science courses to qualify for admission to nursing programs.
• Stress the variety of opportunities in nursing, working with all age groups and across all settings and the full range of nursing programs available—LPN-PhD.
• Tell them about opportunities for job shadowing through their career coordinators to learn more about the day in the life of a nurse.
• Ask how many of them have a relative that is a nurse and what they like best about their jobs.  Again, use your creativity.

• The NSNA video is excellent for this age group along with the brochures.
• In addition to the handouts referred to above from the SC Healthcare Recruitment and Retention Center, there is another handout on financial aid opportunities that may be more interesting to these students.  Packets with all the fact sheets can be prepared in advance.
• In addition to stressing the points above, if you are talking with 9th graders, you may want to advise them of the Health Occupations programs available in some schools that give fundamental learning experiences in health careers and provide opportunities to practice in a nursing care setting.
• Students may want to consider working as nursing assistants to see if they like health careers.  Job Shadowing opportunities are also available in the high schools.
• It is important to stress with this age group that there are different career paths in nursing with different educational programs that will assist them in meeting their goals.  
• Student nurses or new graduate nurses are well received by high school students.  Have them talk about what they would have done differently if they could go back to high school to prepare for their nursing education.  They may also want to share what their favorite clinical area has been.