Fountain Valley High nurse, nominated by ex-student she helped, is a finalist for Greatest School Nurse
Fountain Valley High School nurse Marci McLean is calling on friends, family and colleagues to vote for her in Pfizer’s 2017 America’s Greatest School Nurse contest.
McLean is among 49 nurses nationwide selected as finalists to win the grand-prize package of a roundtrip flight for up to four people to a destination of the winner’s choice within the United States. The winner also will receive an eight-day, seven-night stay at a hotel, with an $800 travel stipend.
Voting is open until April 16, and the winner will be announced May 5. People can vote once a day for the finalists of their choice at americasgreatestschoolnurse.com.
McLean, who was born and raised in Santa Ana, attended Santa Ana College for nursing and later earned a master’s degree from Cambridge College.
She began her career as a nurse in her hometown’s school district in 2005. She took a year off to focus on her family and worked a year in labor and delivery at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.
She worked in the Tustin Unified School District from 2007 to 2010 and now serves as the nurse for Fountain Valley High School.
McLean said she often tweets about teen-related topics such as reproductive health, vaccines and LGBTQ topics. After she tweeted about the school nurse contest, Fountain Valley High alumnus Michael Luong tweeted her, saying he had nominated her for the contest.
In 2010, Luong had approached her while holding his head, moaning and throwing up, McLean said.
McLean did a quick assessment and told her health clerk to call 911 and Luong’s parents. While they waited, Luong’s condition worsened and he became less responsive, McLean said.
When paramedics arrived, they hooked him up to a heart monitor and saw the readings decrease quickly. Soon, he was rushed to a hospital.
“I later found out he had an AVM rupture,” McLean said. “An AVM is a malformation of the vessels in the brain. Some people are born with them and never know about it until this happens, and it’s usually fatal.”
Luong and McLean had never met before the incident, and even afterward there wasn’t much interaction between them, McLean said.
But Luong felt he needed to pay her good deed forward, so when he found out about the contest while on winter break from Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, he filled out the nomination form and wrote why McLean should be named America’s Greatest School Nurse.
On the contest website, Luong wrote that he nominated McLean because she helped him “adjust to my life in high school after being diagnosed with a brain AVM.” She worked with his parents and school staff to “ensure that the stress I felt would be kept at minimal levels at the beginning and to see what’s best for my health and the future,” he wrote.
“She did a lot for me, so I felt like I needed to give back,” Luong said Friday.
He said he went through months of rehabilitation as he transitioned back to high school.
With the contest coming to a close soon, the two are tweeting reminders to vote. Luong said he’s also spread the word through Facebook and Instagram.
McLean said that if she’s selected as the winner, she hopes to travel to Florida with her family to visit Walt Disney World.
Twitter: @VegaPriscella
