School Nursing Issues

Paper Summary:

One of the major issues that school nurses struggle with is over delegating authority to administer student medications. This paper highlights statistics of student medication use and guidelines, nurse-student ratios and recommendations and delegation options. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations for delegating the administration of medications safely and comments on implications for nursing.

From the Paper:

"Delegating the administration of medications to students, especially in elementary schools is one of the most challenging and precarious tasks a school nurse faces. McCarthy (2000) states that for the 5.6% of students that receive daily medication, only 25% of nurses actually administer the medications, with 66% of secretaries, 40% of school aides, 38% of teachers and 18% parents administering the rest. While Healthy People 2010 (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2000) advocates a ratio of at least 1 nurse to every 750 students, this is goal is rarely met, especially with declining funds for education. Price, Dake, Murnan and Telljohann (2003) report that only 52.9% of schools staff a school nurse on more than a 30 hour a week basis, with 43% of elementary schools having a school nurse on staff full time."

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