Role Function of The School Nurse

By Amyra Luthfia Mumpuni, 1706977903, FG 1, Class A, Undergraduate Student

Faculty of Nursing Batch 2017

School nursing and the school health service is the fundamental part of child
health services and its purpose primarily is to meet the needs of the school-aged child
and his or her family (Watkins et al, 2003). School nurses give care to the children as
direct caregivers, educators, counselors, consultants, and case managers (Stanhope &
Lancaster, 2011). Not only that, school nurses must coordinate the health care of many
students in their schools with the health care that the children receive from their own
health care providers. There’s seven roles of school nurses, however, usually school
only have one or two nurses, therefore, the nurses are expected to perform many
different functions. Additional skills needed by school nurses include the ability to
supervise others, to practice relatively independently, and to delegate the care (
McEwen & Nies, 2014). In this paper, I will explain the school nurse’s role which is
counselors, consultant, community outreach, and researcher.

As the one who knows about health in school, nurse’s role is to be counsultant.
As a consultant, the school nurse is the best person-able to provide health information
to school administrators, teachers, and parent-teacher group (Stanhope & Lancaster,
2011). For example, the school nurse can provide professional information about
proposed changes in the school environment to help to make the children’s schools
healthier place. This role is a population-level role for the school nurse; the population
consist of all children, families, staff, and the surrounding community.

On a daily basis, the school nurses see and hear students with a variety of
complaints, therefore one of school nurse’s role is to be counselor. The school nurse
may be the person whom children trust to tell important secrets about their health beside
their teacher and parent. According to Nic Philibin et al (2010) as cited at Stanhope &
Lancaster (2011) as a counselor, the school nurse have a reputation as being a
trustworthy person to whom the chidren can go if they are in trouble or if they need to
confide about a personal matter. There is a good time for the school nurse to talk with
and counsel the student about the risk for development of health problems related to
physical activity which is when the sports physical ( McEwen & Nies, 2014). This is a
perfect setting for the nurse to question girls about menstrual irregularities and to ask
all students about their eating behaviors, feeling about their weight, and history of
musculoskeletal injuries. The school nurse in this situation should tell the children that
if anything they reveal points out that they are in danger, the parents and school officials
must be told. However, privacy and confidentiality, as in all health care are important.

When the school nurses particapating in community outreach, nurses can be

invloved in community health fairs or festivals in the schools. The school nurses can
using that opportunity to teach others, for example they can be a part of an influenza
immunization program for the school staff and can promote a health education fair and
do blood pressure screening (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2011). Other than that, according
to Epstein et al (2009) when participating in community research, the school nurses
also can intitiating a liaison and coordinating with local health charieties to provide
education to the schools.

Last, in this era, there has been a lot of a little research about nurses caring for
children in the schools. Therefore, the school nurse is responsible for making sure that
the nursing care given to the children is based on solid, evidence-based practice.
However, outcomes regarding school nurse services need to be studied, therefore, as
an educator, the school nurses is in the right position to do studies as a researcher that
advances school nursing practice (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2011).
References

McEwen, Melanie., & Nies, M. A. (2014). Community/public health nursing:

Promoting the health of populations 6th ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier Mosby

Stanhope, Marcia., & Lancaster, Jeanette. (2011). Public health nursing: Population-
centered health care in the community 8th ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier Mosby

Watkins, Dianne., et al. (2003). Community health nursing: Frameworks for practice
2nd ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier Limited