The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions to U.S. school systems since March 2020. To facilitate our understanding of how school nurses participated in school reopening and what support school nurses needed beginning the 2020–2021 school year during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted a national survey in late summer 2020. A sample of 747 school nurses from 43 states responded to an online survey about roles, practices, and concerns. Over one-third (36.9%) reported not being included in school reopening planning. Mitigation practices reported by respondents primarily included measuring temperatures of students before school (21.3%), mask wearing by students (79.9%), and 6 feet social distancing (76.7%). The respondents’ greatest concerns were the educational impact on students with individualized education plans, parents sending children to school with COVID-19 symptoms, and the economic impact on families. Our results point to opportunities for greater school nurse involvement, improvements in practices, and measures to address school nurses’ concerns.

D istractions in the perioperative work environment can adversely affect vigilance, situation awareness, and the ability to respond promptly to changes in the patient's condition and pose a risk to patient safety. The Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) believes that the role of all types of distractions, and their potential adverse effects, needs to be addressed through open discussion, education, research, policy, and possibly other interventions. To make progress in this area, APSF convened a conference entitled "Distractions in the Anesthesia Work Environment: Impact on Patient Safety" in Phoenix, Arizona, on September 7, 2016, comoderated by the authors. Robert Stoelting, APSF immediate past president, welcomed over 100 participants who represented anesthesia professionals, surgeons, operating room (OR) and perioperative nurses, the nuclear power and surface transportation industries, and risk management. The goals of the conference were to (1) delineate the most important types of external and self-induced distractions occurring in anesthesia professionals' different work environments, (2) identify those distractions most likely to pose patient safety risks (ie, high-risk distractions), and (3) develop recommendations for decreasing the incidence of high-risk distractions and to reduce the risk to patient safety when distractions of all types occur. The conference started with a series of informational presentations by diverse stakeholders with associated audience response polls followed by panel discussions and small group breakout sessions.

The Greater Boston Nursing Collective, a consortium composed of university nursing deans and chief nursing officers within academic medical centers and specialty hospitals in Boston, Massachusetts, was formed in 2014. Since the group's inception, our mission has been to create and reinforce whole-person/whole-system healing environments to improve the health of all communities. Through our collaboration in navigating the dual epidemics of COVID-19 and structural racism within our respective organizations, and across the United States and the world, we share experiences and lessons learned. Our common mission is clearer than ever: to create safe and joyful work environments, to protect the dignity of those we are privileged to serve, and to generate policies to advance health equity to rectify societal forces that have shaped this dual epidemic. We are humbled by the many who persist despite limited rest and respite, and whose stories, innovations, and leadership we are honored to witness and share. They have defined our generation, just as nurses in earlier crises have done: leading through service to others as our purpose and privilege.