Nurses 86’d by 13

Remember when you went to school, 20 or 30 years ago, did you have a school nurse? Most schools used to. However, since Proposition 13, many school districts have chosen to spend their resources on classrooms and are neglecting the issue of school health care. While education code mandates screenings, immunizations and services for children with health problems, it does not mandate school nurses to provide those services!

According to the latest data, 94 percent of the schools have students with asthma, 45 percent have students who need blood glucose monitoring and 23 percent of students need insulin. In addition, 19 percent have students who need emergency injections such as an Epi-pen for severe allergies. Many, if not most, schools have students who take medication on a regular basis. And yet, only 7 percent of the schools have a full-time credentialed school nurse. Seventy-five percent have a part-time school nurse, who may spend a few hours a week to a few hours a month at the school. Eighteen percent of the schools have no school nurse at all—even working out of the district office. With only 2,469 school nurses currently working in our schools, who is responsible for the care of these children?

Many schools assign the duties of the school nurse to the school health aide or secretary who may not have first aid or CPR certification. There may be little or no established protocols for medication storage or administration. Yet school health aides and secretaries are called upon, every day, to administer Ritalin, Coumadin, antibiotics and epinephrine, to name just a few.

A credentialed school nurse is trained to deal with so much more than medical emergencies and medication administration. They have been trained to provide health education classes, health appraisals, medical referrals and follow-up, crisis intervention, communicable disease control, and social welfare—helping families to receive health-care coverage and services that they may need, as well as providing health counseling and CPR and first aid certification for staff. Rather than looking at the cost of a school nurse, districts should be looking at the cost of not having the services of a credentialed school nurse.

If you are concerned about the lack of nursing services in your child’s school, talk to other parents and your school board. If you would like more information about the services that school nurses can provide, please contact the California School Nurses Organization. Our Web site is www.csno.org.