One district's school nurse shortage easing....slightly

[cougarnurse]

How about you other school nurses? Any comments? Tooele Transcript Bulletin - News, Classifieds, Events and Businesses in Tooele, Utah

Two years after funding was allocated to hire additional school nurses, Tooele County Health Department officials say the extra help has made a difference in improving school nursing services, though there’s a long way to go yet.

In 2007, Tooele County gave a $300,000 subsidy to the Tooele County School District to hire additional nurses for the 2007-08 school year. Funds to pay for the new nurses came from payment in lieu of taxes (PILT) money received from the federal government.

The school district contracts with the health department to provide school nursing services, according to Sherrie Ahlstrom, family and school health supervisor with the county health department. Since 2007, additional funding for more nurses hasn’t been received, but funding hasn’t been taken away either, Ahlstrom said. With the increased funding, the number of school nurses jumped from the equivalent of two full-time nurses to five full-time equivalents.

“It has helped tremendously, but we still have a ways to go,” Ahlstrom said. “It improved school nursing services in the school, but it still does not accomplish the goal of the National Association of School Nurses, which is one nurse for 750 students.”

The nurse-to-student ratio for the Tooele County School District is now approximately one nurse per 2,700 students, an improvement over the ratio two years ago of one nurse for every 6,100 students.

“We’re actually quite lucky,” said Amy Royal, school nursing coordinator. “Our ratio is a lot lower than most places in Utah because of the extra funding, which we’re grateful for.”

According to 2008 data from the National Association of School Nurses, Utah has the worst ratio of school nurses to students in the nation, with one nurse for every 4,893 students.

Ahlstrom said it would be ideal to have a school nurse full-time in every school.

“That [one per school] would be the ideal situation because schools are seeing more children coming to school with chronic diseases than they ever have before,” she said. “Many more are taking medications regularly and needing nursing procedures regularly.”

She said while there are sicker kids in school, they can’t always get the health care they need with so few nurses on staff.

“They can’t be there all day every day, so naturally when something goes wrong the nurse may not be there,” Ahlstrom said. “But it [the extra nurses] has helped. We are able to be in the schools more than we ever were before.”

Royal said most nurses have about three to four schools they visit a couple of times a week. In addition to vision and scoliosis screenings, maturation clinics, and updating immunization records, their main job is to develop and evaluate individual health care plans. These plans are coordinated with parents, physicians and school personnel.

“Our main job is to do those care plans and make sure those kids are taken care of and doing training for faculty,” Royal said. “And when we’re there we take care of scraped-up knees.”

Ahlstrom said asthma has been the fastest-increasing student health problem both nationally and in Tooele.

In addition, Ahlstrom said she is seeing more kids with one-on-one issues that need to be dealt with by school nurses. She’s seeing more kids with social issues like eating disorders and violence.

“Social issues have become an increasing problem nurses are having to deal with,” she said.