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School Nurse Shortage

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The article that I have chosen is of interest to me because as a registered nurse in the school setting, there is a current shortage of school nurses. I found this article by doing a search on Google using the key words “shortage of school nurses”. As a school nurse I am responsible to oversee four elementary schools. I am scheduled to provide approximately 24 hours per week at one school, eight to 16 hours at another school and for the third school, I am to provide eight hours or as needed each week with very limited service to the fourth school. Two of these schools I service are of Title1schools with the majority of the students at the poverty level. Many of these children have chronic illnesses along with complicated health conditions and limited or no health insurance. …show more content…

With more children who have complex medical conditions, along with the increase in schools and students, it is becoming extremely difficult to meet the demands of the students. In the United States there is no government legislation that supports having school nurses. Some states do make stipulations on having school nurses according to the number of students in a school, which ends up not having access to a full-time nurse daily, and also having an extremely high student ratio (Nwabuzor, 2007).

The National Association of School Nurses (NASN) has advocated there should be one nurse to every 750 healthy students attending school. For those students who require the daily services of a registered Nurse there should be only 225 students per one nurse and for those students who have complicated healthcare needs should have one nurse per every 125 students. The American Academy of Pediatrics has also advocated for one nurse per every 750 students along with the recognition of Healthy People 2020 (National Association of School Nurses,

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