May 2016
Happy School Nurse Day – May 11, 2016! School nursing is an autonomous discipline creating many opportunities for diversity in practice focus. As school nurses identify areas of need in the communities they serve, they are tasked with finding creative, collaborative ways to make health services available to students and families.
As an example of this diversity, we can look at the intensive outreach services provided by school nurses in Pasco County, Florida (my home!). School nurses there have applied the problem solving process to establish partnerships within their communities in order to improve students' access to healthcare. Here are some examples of their outreach efforts:
- The local health department provides nurse practitioner services at several high schools, a mobile dental sealant program at all Title I elementary schools, and has established a successful dental operatory (2 dental chairs!!) on one school campus that is open 4 days/week - all coordinated by school nurses.
- The school district and the health department also have an agreement with a private company to provide flu vaccines annually to students - coordinated by school nurses.
- School nurses had been coordinating monthly Ronald McDonald Care Mobile visits until the mobile unit was transferred to another county. We were able to retain the services of the Care Mobile ARNP by maintaining a local grant that had originally supported these visits! So now a nearby university's pediatric nurse practitioner continues to visit our schools each month - coordinated by school nurses.
- We've been fortunate to partner with several mobile vision outreach services to provide free vision screening for students and glasses for those in need - coordinated by school nurses.
All Florida school nurses make a HUGE difference in the lives of students and families by providing these types of intensive outreach services - allowing services to take place at school and keeping kids healthy, safe, and ready to learn! It takes a great deal of collaboration and effort but the reward and the gain is so significant.
We know there are other school nurses (YOU!) across our state and our nation that are involved in similar initiatives. We need to continue to share these health promotion efforts with other school nurses, involve our community partners in these efforts, and continue to have courageous conversations with our legislators (ADVOCACY!!) so everyone recognizes the value in our outreach work and can collaborate to support this type of school nurse-driven innovative action!
Send FASN information about YOUR outreach efforts so we can share this valuable information with other Florida nurses and keep linking HEALTH and LEARNING. Have a wonderful School Nurse Day and celebrate AND SHARE your successes!