To help the nurses out at Bellows Free Academy, they are welcoming a new friendly face into the nurses’ offices. The new friendly face that students may be seeing in the nurses’ offices is Kathleen (Katie) Deal. 

With Covid-19 being so present in high schools lately, the nurses are under a lot of pressure. “I’m just helping take a little bit of the pressure off the nurses with COVID and everything,” Deal said.  

Although Deal isn’t necessarily one of the head nurses here, she is still taking on the equivalent amount of responsibility. She is currently doing the triaging of students when they enter the nurse’s office so the other nurses can work on paperwork; she described her position as “a lot of computer work.”  

Deal has completed two years of college, with a nursing major, at Villanova University and plans to continue her college career after taking a break from school this year. She stated that she really enjoyed the labs that they did in her classes and also the unit on sociology. 

Deal recently worked at Elderwood in Burlington. There, she was a Licensed Nursing Assistant otherwise known as an LNA. In that job, she was responsible for caring for the residents. 

Deal said that although the job description was a bit vague when applying, she is settling in.