School Nurse Role in Secondary School Research Assignment

School Nurse Role in Secondary School
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Institution Affiliation
School health program aims at preventing health related barriers to learning. The National Association of School Nurses provides that every school child should have access to healthcare services. School nurses provide the services in the school settings. They play an important role in bridging the gap between academic and health needs of the students. They therefore reduce student absenteeism by ensuring that their health needs are met, thus ensuring academic success of the children.
Roles of a school nurse
School nurses play a key role in providing leadership in schools. They develop policies, programs and procedures for delivery of school health services. They evaluate the general health care system in the school and formulate a plan for responding to emergencies and disaster situations. It is the responsibility of the school nurses to train the students on first aid skills and basics of using first-aid kits in case of emergency. With the advancement in technology, some first –aid kits are sophisticated to use, and therefore require prior training of users (Duff, 2014).
School nurses provide direct health care to the student and this is their primary role (Duff, 2014). They treat ill students and provide long-term management of those with chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes mellitus. They communicate with parents, refer to physicians and provide supervision to prescribed nursing care. It is therefore the responsibility of school nurses to provide early screening of diseases and health condition referral to medical facilities (Duff, 2014).
Furthermore, school nurses promote health and prevent spread of infectious diseases in the school environment (Duff, 2014). They ensure safety of the school community by monitoring immunization programs, ensuring exclusion of students with infectious illnesses and reporting disease outbreaks according to the law. In addition, they provide health education to the students,staff and parents. The information and teachings given to students raise awareness enabling them to decide on particular health actions. School nurses educate the school community on nutrition, healthy lifestyles and prevention of infectious diseases (Duff, 2014).
Moreover, school nurses coordinate the students’ well-being between hospitals, family and school. This is because a school nurse is a member of health provision team of medical practitioners that participates in individualized health education of students to reduce health related barriers to learning. They formulate the plan, update and implement it on behalf of other healthcare providers. In addition, they provide direct health services to the school community such as medication administration and treatment (Duff, 2014).
School nurses can delegate some tasks to unlicensed assistive personnel when the need arises in accordance with state laws, regulations and guidance (Shannon &Kubelka, 2013). The National Association of School Nurses support dele...