Community health nurses are dedicated to helping create broad stroke health solutions for communities that are struggling with specific issues. Any parent or teacher knows that “communities struggling with specific health issues,” is a description that would certainly apply to your average school.
Specialized nurses could be a great fit for educational environments where young people are in regular contact with one another. In this article, we will take a look at the benefits of community health nursing in schools, and look at ways communities can implement this idea effectively.
What is a Community Health Nurse?
Community health nurses provide a range of responsibilities— all relating to the health not just of individuals, but communities as a whole. This could involve administering vaccines, organizing clinics, and providing information that can help people make more informed health decisions.
Community health nurses hold special certifications that make them qualified to perform duties beyond the standard clinical responsibilities of an RN.
In many cases, community health nurses will work with hospitals or clinics, leading their efforts to provide better preventative care to entire communities.
Why are they relevant to schools? We will describe the benefits in more detail in the next few headings.
Schools are Small Communities
Even tiny schools are effectively like their own towns. There are constant interactions between people from different households. Germs are exchanged, and hygiene among school citizens is….questionable.
The potential for viruses to spread is enormous. Anyone who has ever sent their child to school knows that transferable illness is a constant part of life. Flu. Strep. Pink eye. Endless colds. Covid. Rates of infection within schools can get so high that the health department routinely needs to be alerted.
School nurses do their part in managing the problem. They pull kids out of classrooms when they are displaying symptoms of illness. They contact parents when vaccine records are not up to date. They treat minor injuries or illnesses.
But even the best school nurse in the world does not have many options available to them in the form of preventative care.
Community health nurses can help create custom solutions designed to nip illness in the bud before it becomes a problem. How?
How Community Nurses Health
As mentioned earlier, the responsibilities of the community health nurse are often split between providing educational services and administering preventative care. In the school setting, a community health nurse will identify the major issues facing the student body.
This could be related primarily to transferable illness, but it could include more fundamental issues as well. Maybe the school has a high rate of peanut allergies. Are adequate precautions being taken? Maybe the school has high rates of obesity. Do the lunches align with healthy diet recommendations? What vulnerable populations are present within the school?
Once community health nurses identify the problem they can:
- Conduct health screenings: A community health nurse can perform routine vision, hearing, and scoliosis screenings for students. This helps identify health issues early and ensure students receive proper care.
- Provide health education: For students with asthma, diabetes, or other ongoing health needs, the nurse can administer medication, monitor symptoms, and coordinate care plans with families and staff.
- Respond to emergencies: A community health nurse is equipped to handle injuries, allergic reactions, and other urgent situations that may arise during the school day.
By providing these services, the community nurse can fill in the gaps of traditional school healthcare. This has the potential to help avoid transferable illness—which can have a big impact on the health of the student body, and their families. A cold may not be a big deal for a second grader, but it can be lethal to the 80-year-old grandmother they bring it home to.
Community health nurses can also help improve attendance. Missing a few days here and there may not seem like much, but it adds up. In many states, missing even 5 days in a year can trigger a truancy response. Many families struggle with this. They want to send their children to school, but their kids are always getting sick.
Community health nurses can play a big part in making schools a safer environment for regular attendance.
How to Make it Happen
Most schools will already have a dedicated nurse and probably do not have the budget to hire an entirely new healthcare professional. They may love the idea, but they don’t have the budget.
Realistically, the average school also probably does not have enough work to keep a community health nurse busy for forty hours a week. Kids get sick, but not THAT sick. Does this issue neutralize the proposition right out of the gate? Not necessarily.
There are many instances in which public school systems will share professionals. For example, let’s say there are three small, single school districts located within a few miles of one another. Neighborhood schools. All three of them are experiencing a problem with truancy, but none of them can afford a dedicated truancy officer. With populations of 200 students each, the truancy officer would hardly have enough work to keep them busy full-time.
Should they simply accept that they will always struggle with poor attendance? Certainly not. What they can do is partner up. Split the cost of a truancy officer three ways, and have the professional that they hire work “shifts,” at each school—going where they are most needed.
The same could be accomplished with a community health nurse. It’s not an easy proposition. It requires multiple school boards, principals, and superintendents to work closely together to establish agreeable terms.
Still, when done correctly, it can be a great way to get a community health nurse into local schools.
Other options may include hiring community health nurses on a freelance basis or working with nursing agencies who can place them at a school temporarily.
