School Nurses Make a Difference

Since being introduced over a century ago, the school nurse role has evolved, becoming increasingly more important. Back in 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended one school nurse to every 750 students. With the growing complexity of student health issues, the AAP now recommends that there be at least one full-time nurse employed at every school.

What is the role of a school nurse? “Health issues, big or small, are all barriers to learning,” explains Jennifer Lindsay, MSN, RN, NCSN, who serves as the school health supervisor at Catawba County Public Health. “School nurses are in place to help eliminate health issues as roadblocks to students’ success in school.”

Catawba County Public Health outlines a school nurses’ responsibilities into eight roles:

  • Health Services: Serves as the coordinator of the health services program and provides nursing care
  • Health Education: Provides health education to students, staff and parents
  • Healthy Environment: Identifies health and safety concerns in the school environment and promotes a nurturing social environment
  • Nutritional Services: Supports healthy food services programs
  • Physical Education/Activity: Promotes healthy physical education, sports policies and practices
  • Counseling: Provides health counseling, assesses mental health needs, provides interventions and refers students to appropriate school staff or community agencies
  • Parent/Community Involvement: Promotes community involvement in assuring a healthy school; serves as school liaison to a health advisory committee
  • Staff Wellness: Provides health education and counseling, promotes healthy activities and helps create a healthy environment for school staff

Why are they important? According to the National Association of School Nurses (NASN), there are five ways a school nurse benefits the school:

  • Attendance: School nurses improve attendance through health promotion, disease prevention and disease management. Students with a full-time school nurse have about half the student illness- or injury-related early releases from school compared to schools where no school nurse is present.
  • Academics: Improved attendance means the healthy student is in the classroom and ready to learn. School nurses enable better performance, which also contributes to reducing drop-out rates.
  • Time: School nurses save time for principals, teachers and staff. A school nurse in the building saves principals, teachers and clerical staff a considerable amount of time that they would have spent addressing health concerns of students. Specifically, a school nurse in the building saves principals almost an hour a day, teachers almost 20 minutes a day and clerical staff more than 45 minutes a day.
  • Staff Wellness: School nurses improve staff members’ general health. According to school reports, principals, teachers, and clerical staff are satisfied with having school nurses in their schools because it enables teachers to focus on teaching, office staff spend less time calling parents and sending students home and having a healthy staff means increased attendance and productivity all around.
  • Accountability: School nurses help schools stay accountable by promoting compliance with federal and state law, which mitigates lawsuits. Nurses also prepare for emergencies, which can save lives and property and they address student mental health, which is linked to academic achievement.

Thanks to funding from local sources such as Catawba Valley Medical Center, Catawba County and area school systems, the school nurse ratio in Catawba County has been inching closer to the AAP goal.

“We haven’t quite reached the one nurse to every school ratio yet,” said Lindsay. “However, the nurse-to-student ratio here in our county has improved dramatically over the past decade. We have grown from five nurses in the mid-1990s to 23 today, thanks to the efforts of Catawba Valley Medical Center, Catawba County Public Health, the state and our schools to secure grants and other funds for additional nursing positions.”

Catawba County Public Health’s School Health Team seeks to ensure that children in grades K-12 have access to preventive and acute health care. To learn more about school nurses at your child’s school, visit Catawba County Public Health’s School Health Website.

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