"No school nurses left behind"

[VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN]

September 29, 2005 -- Today Salon posted a lengthy, generally good piece by Laurie Udesky about the denursification of U.S. public schools, which has come at a time when the number of children attending with serious, chronic health issues like asthma continues to grow. Udesky's story includes harrowing anecdotes illustrating the "often tragic results" as non-nurse school workers try to care for sick children. Part of the problem, Udesky reports, is the tremendous financial pressures that the No Child Left Behind program and local budget demands have placed on public schools. The piece might have focused more on the views and experiences of the nurses themselves, but it still provides a good sense of the value of nurses and the gravity of the problem.

Perhaps the most compelling theme in the long piece is that schools that have cut back on their nursing staff to meet the testing requirements of No Child Left Behind and retain critical federal funding may actually be jeopardizing their main goal, because of the demonstrated link between student health and student learning. The piece describes the experience of one committed Mississippi superintendent who decided to address the 30% drop-out rate of his low-income district, whose major health problems included diabetes, asthma and obesity, by hiring prevention-focused school nurses and social workers. The drop-out rate dropped to 2%--and the school's state funding increased. This is critical. Even if you think it's not a big priority to give children any more access to care than most adults have at work, this kind of experience shows that failing to take special measures to protect children imperils their ability to learn, and thus the future of the nation.

http://www.nursingadvocacy.org/news/2005sep/29_salon.html

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/09/29/schoolnurses/index_np.html