Healthy Students Achieve!
School Nurses Make It Happen.
With adequate resources and community support, we CAN meet our students’ health, social, emotional and developmental needs where they are – at school and in the community.
We believe that school health services can provide the hub and the structure within which community organizations, health providers, and employers can work together to improve and maintain young people’s health.
School nurses fill a critical role in the health of Washington’s children. They plan and implement care for children with minor health issues, chronic and life-threatening health conditions, and contribute to a safer, supportive environment for all students.
Is School Nursing Right for YOU?
School nursing is “a specialized practice of nursing, [that] protects and promotes student health, facilitates optimal development, and advances academic success.”
School nurses, grounded in ethical and evidence-based practice, are the leaders who bridge health care and education, provide care coordination, advocate for quality student-centered care, and collaborate to design systems that allow individuals and communities to develop their full potential.” Adopted by the NASN Board of Directors February 2017.
School Nurses…
- Coordinate care for children with health conditions through
- Individual Health Plan development
- Direct care
- Education to self-manage health conditions
- Case management
- Transition planning
- Care Coordination with school teams and community providers
- Prevent disease and injury through
- Education and immunization management;
- Infection control,
- Screenings and surveillance for health issues, and
- Chronic disease management
- Lead efforts to create healthy schools and communities by
- Assuring health is addressed in school and other policies,
- Use of appropriate technologies, and evidence-based practice
- Utilize their knowledge of community health to:
- Promote equitable access to care
- Address environmental barriers to health
- Manage health risks
- Improve quality through:
- Management of chronic health conditions
- Ethical and effective interpretation and use of data,
- Collection and implementation of research evidence, and
- Linking health and educational success
- One pager on why you want to be a school nurse
- School Nurses and Mental Behavioral Health (MBH)
Joys of School Nurse Practice
- Working with children and families
- Family friendly schedule – no nights, weekends, or holiday shifts
- Prevention focus
- Professionally independent practice
- Opportunity to serve in your own community and improve access to health care
Making a difference every day in a child’s life!
What Do School Nurses Do?
School nurses work in a non-health setting and translate health issues for their school and larger community. School nurses apply the nursing process to support students with chronic health conditions like Type I Diabetes, seizure disorders, severe allergies, asthma, and other health issues to be able to attend school safely. They acquire nursing care orders from medical providers and translate those orders for non-health staff to assure that emergent health problems are managed appropriately. They use those orders and their nursing knowledge to develop emergency and individualized health plans, evaluate the impact of health conditions on the child’s ability to participate in school, develop interventions to minimize the impact of those health conditions, and evaluate the effectiveness of those interventions.
- They coordinate care for children with health conditions through a variety of nursing interventions that include direct care, education to self-manage chronic conditions, case management, transition planning, and work on interdisciplinary teams
- They are leaders in their work sites as advocates to promote healthy schools and communities, assuring health is addressed in school and other policies, use of appropriate technologies, and use of evidence-based practice.
- They assure quality improvement in their schools through the ethical and effective interpretation and use of data, collection and implementation of research evidence, and making the link between health and educational success for their communities.
- They utilize their knowledge of community health to promote equitable access to care, prevent disease (both through education and infection control), analyze environmental barriers to health, risk management, primary prevention of disease and injury through education and immunization management, secondary prevention through screenings and surveillance for health issues, and tertiary prevention through chronic disease management for students with chronic health conditions.
School nursing is an investment in the health and well-being of our state’s communities.