Nursing Forms

NASN has Guidelines for School Nursing Documentation http://www.nasn.org/publications/orderform_itemlist.pdf It is a little out of date, but still very useful. There are sample forms

You should not use a log that includes mutliple students names, like the Ward log that is sold at nursing conferences right next to the legal book (Schwab & Gelfman) which says to use a log illegal and not in line with best practices and school nursing standards. It violates FERPA privacy rights. Each student should have their own log or have a single sheet that goes in their manila folder after the visit.

Even better are the electronic logs that allow a daily log of all students, but moves each student's visit into their own record. They can provide counts of all visits, frequencies of each health problem or injuries, analyses of peak visit and peak days of week or months. Makes it easy to identify trends and identify priorities for prevention and health promotion.

Thanks for the advice. I do have a question. If each student has his or her own log, how will I be able to track what happens on let's say December 1, 2005? It would be very time consuming to search through each 479 students logs for a particular day. Maybe there's a simple solution for this, if so, please tell me. Also, wouldn't this Binder be pretty large with over 479 pages?

Barbra

At a school that large I could use two binders or the single sheet per child method. You would put the sheets in their files at the end of the day. At other larger schools, I've seen a different binder for each grade. One school with, I think it was 4000 students, a high school, printed the students individual 4 X 5 1/2 inch log on card stock and keep them in kind of shoebox shaped plastic bin on the desk. Each card has labels made up by the main office with the child's name and grade and, if lower grades, teacher; in the older grades, homeroom. When the card if filled there is another set of labels to make a new card. The cards are numbered also. Each grade had a different color - freshman green, sohomores blue, etc. At the end of the year, the students log went in their file.

To be able to provide a record for an individual day, I still endorse using a daily log. "Directory " information is allowed with multiple students names, so as long as you do not have the students put their complaint on the card, you have a record of who came in your office that day, what time, when they left and their dispositon, back to class or home.

Of course all this is moot if you can get the district to invest in health office software or if you can get a grant to fund it.

Wow, thanks,this is some great info.

Barbra

Wow, thanks,this is some great info.

Barbra