School Nurses

Making a Difference One Student At a Time

Hopefully Helpful School Nurse Tip: Sometimes, it can be challenging to articulate the duties and responsibilities of school nursing. Leveraging existing resources and information can help clarify these roles. Start with this article for guidance...

Charting Nursing’s Future
A publication of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

I first heard about this article from School Nurse Sue Dillon-

you can read the 2010 article here.

This is a great article full of research and statistics related too.

School health services have been described as a “hidden system” of health care by Julia Graham Lear, PhD, founder of the Center for Health and Healthcare in Schools at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. Lear notes that school health services are largely unfamiliar to health policy decision makers— even though tens of thousands of counselors, nurses, psychologists, and social workers and smaller numbers of other health professionals are caring for children’s physical and emotional needs in schools.

School nurses reside at the core of this enterprise. They play diverse roles (see “What School Nurses Do,” below) and collaborate with other health professionals to serve the needs of all students. Some schools also offer expanded health services through school-based health centers staffed by nurse practitioners (see page 6).

Escalating health care costs and the failure of recent educational reform initiatives to significantly improve student performance are prompting many reformers in both these arenas to examine the connection between health and learning and to reconsider the potential of school nurses to keep children healthy, in school, and ready to learn.

To achieve their goals, reformers will have to confront a range of challenges, including a lack of federal policy and a patchwork of state and local policies regarding school nurse staffing and practice (see pages 4–5) and the financing of school health services (see page 7). Despite these challenges, some state and local policy initiatives offer promising models (see pages 4, 5, and 7), and opportunities for greater federal support of school nursing may be gaining traction (see page 8).

“Unlocking the potential of school nursing:
Keeping children healthy, in school, and ready to learn.”

The article also helps answer the question-

What does a school nurse do?

I’ll mention a few things school nurses do according to the article here. You can add many more too!

SCHOOL NURSES:

Provide episodic care
Manage chronic conditions
Track communicable diseases
Promote healthy behaviors
Connect children with insurance and healthcare providers
Handle emergency situations
Handle life-threatening allergy and asthma events
Respond to student's physical and emotional concerns
Connect students with substance abuse treatment and mental, behavioral, and reproductive health services
Screen for conditions that impair learning, such as poor vision and hearing
Educate children about healthy lifestyles
Ensure immunization compliance
Develop health plants for students with disabilities
Prepare for school wide and community emergencies
Administer medication and provide first aid
And so much more!

Really, there is so much more. According to a research article I recently read, there can be up to 80+ duties for a school nurse! Comment what would you add to this list?