The Associated Press | Posted: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 12:00 am
MOSCOW, Idaho - Idaho's student-to-school nurse ratio ranks 42nd in the nation with a single nurse per 2,368 students, according to the National Association of School Nurses
Some nurses say they are stretched thin for halting the spread of disease within schools, conducting vision and hearing screenings, leading sexual education classes, overseeing cardiopulmonary resuscitation and first-aid classes for staff and organizing blood drives.
The national average is one nurse per 1,151 students. In neighboring Washington state it's one per 1,060 students.
Idaho needs more medical personnel in its public schools, said JoAnn Blout, who represents the national association's state affiliate of the National Association of School Nurses.
She said school nurses play a key role in intercepting students who may bring contagious diseases to class, connecting students who have special needs with medical services and providing some health care to children without insurance.
"We are kind of what you call a first line of defense," Blout, a school nurse in the Meridian School District near Boise, told the Lewiston Tribune. "There are many districts … that are very small and have no school nurses at all."
The Cassia County School District doesn't have its own nurse but has contracted with the South Central Public Health District for 200 hours of service annually, the equivalent of five weeks of full-time work.
Students average 2.5 minutes of nurse time annually, compared with the recommended one hour and 40 minutes.
Lewiston's public schools contract for nursing services through the North Central District Health Department for nurses to work at each of the district's 11 schools for several hours at least once a week. Those services fail to meet the national association's standards.
"They (Lewiston schools) are getting minimal services, but there are many school districts that aren't getting the minimal services," said Dianne Waldemarson, the health district's division administrator. "We're not in the buildings long enough to provide those kinds of services."
The Idaho State Department of Education doesn't require school districts to provide nurses but offers financial aid to the districts that budget for one, said Melissa McGrath, an agency spokeswoman. School districts can receive state reimbursements based on a nurse's level of experience and education, but additional compensation depends on each district, McGrath said.
"The state does provide funding for school nurses in the same way that the state provides funding for teachers, which is based on a salary grid," she said.
Schools aren't the only places in Idaho with a shortage of nurses.
In 2007 state lawmakers set aside $37 million to build new nursing education facilities at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls and at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston. The Legislature also added 200 slots for nursing students at state schools.
The Moscow and Mountainview school districts in northcentral Idaho each have one full-time school nurse. Tracy Baune, Grangeville's registered nurse in Grangeville, covers six public schools, monitoring health problems and conducting programs ranging from scoliosis testing to lice checks and high school sex ed.
"Sometimes you get spread pretty thin," Baune said. "It would be really nice to see school nurses in all the schools. Rural schools really do benefit from seeing a school nurse."