Band-Aids for the Body and the Mind

When you think of the school nurse, you think of taking temperatures and calling home. But when I think of a school nurse, I think of all the emotional things.

There are so many little things we call on her for so often.

I teach an urban survival class. And a lot of things come out in class that need to be dealt with immediately. For example, I came into class one day and a girl was crying. She said, “My mom told me if I don’t gain weight, she will put me in a hospital. She says I’m anorexic.” So we went to the nurse and we worked out a game plan. I’ve done the same in abuse situations. So, for me, a nurse is critical.

If the nurse hadn’t been there, I probably would have done the same things I did--the girl and I talked for 45 minutes or an hour. But going to the nurse validated the problem. So, she went home and talked with her mom about the game plan. We are trying to support the mom.

I think any teacher could give similar examples where a nurse is needed immediately. In recent phys. ed. classes, I’ve had students with a broken foot and a sprained ankle. The nurse has come down right away, and I have been able to maintain class.

The nurse also serves as a liaison between me and the parents. For instance, the kid with the broken foot: The nurse had the records on who to call in an emergency, and, if the mom is not available, who else to call. If the nurse had not been there, it would have been a secretary taking time away from other duties to make the calls, or it would have taken me out of the classroom.

VICKI EVELETH, Athletic director, La Jolla High School

I’ve decided school nursing really makes a difference in kids’ lives. The point is not to whine about our jobs--any of us (who are laid off) can go out and get a job. The point is the kids’ lives.

Yeah, we get kids in here who just need Band-Aids. But sometimes it’s a Band-Aid on the psyche. We do a lot of counseling and we make a lot of referrals.

In elementary schools, nurses are in the classroom a lot. They have been teaching sex ed. to sixth-graders for 60 years. And in high school, nurses teach the class on AIDS.

Sometimes we get kids who’ve come up from Mexico and who have never had a vision test or a hearing test. But I also get kids in here whose mother is a physician and whose father is a physician, yet they come to see me.

About half of the kids in the district do not have health insurance; for them we are sometimes the primary care. If the school nurses are cut and the county cuts its medical services program for these people also, they will be between a rock and a hard place.

MARTHA THUM, Nurse at La Jolla High School

My campus is atypical in that I have 28 infants and toddlers in day care. Teen mothers don’t always know when their babies are sick. So I can screen them and make referrals. This helps keep the girls in school. So that is one area where we will be affected.

About 80% of our students are from low-income families, and for a lot of them I am the primary care provider. That also will be affected. We also have eight severely emotionally disturbed students on medication. They have periods where they can’t cope with the classroom--where they get into confrontations with other students--and they will come down and spend time with me.

We have 16 severely handicapped kids who have been mainstreamed--kids in wheelchairs and with walkers, kids with cerebral palsy, fetal alcohol syndrome or Down’s syndrome. At my school, I don’t have any regular procedures to maintain, such as a tracheostomy, feeding through a tube, catheterization or changing colostomy bags. But at lots of schools, nurses have to handle these things.

It’s great for these handicapped kids to be able to stay in neighborhood schools. But if nurses are cut, there is no way they can stay in these schools. Secretaries don’t have the expertise to do these functions.

Lincoln also has 49 reported pregnancies and 58 teen mothers in parenting classes I’m involved with.

I see a lot of substance abuse, single parents, gang problems. These kids come to school depressed and confused, and that’s probably what I deal with more than anything else.

Normally, the teachers bring the suspected child abuse cases to me. But a lot of times the kids will just come in and tell me. Recently I saw a girl who was suicidal. Just being with her and sitting with her, she began to talk about her problems. I spent almost four hours with her.

I probably see about 50 students a day now. But when you are a school nurse, you don’t just take care of the students, you sometimes take care of the whole family. Parents will send in other children. Cafeteria workers will come in or bring in their kids.

But if the school district goes with the proposed ratio of 1 nurse to 6,000 students, I will be in a different school each day.

YVONNE EVANS, Nurse practitioner, Lincoln Preparatory School

As a classroom teacher, we try to make sure that there is not an adversarial relationship between teacher and student that could be alleviated with knowledge. Just knowing little things about students’ health can help teachers understand why they need to sit right in front of you or why they might need a pass every day.

Children don’t have the same closeness with counselors as with a nurse. They look at counselors as disciplinarians and schedule makers and the person you talk with about financial aid. My main relationship with our school nurse is as a coach. During one of the football players’ study halls each week, we bring in speakers. One day it might be a talk about self-esteem. The nurse might talk about AIDS and condoms, or testicular cancer. She has talked about athletes’ diets in scientific terms, not folklore. She has taken us out of the Dark Ages.

I really think the most important thing is that the nurse is a haven for kids who really have problems.

I don’t think it was predesigned, but the nurse’s office is a haven. It’s more private than a counseling office to discuss problems that run the gamut from child abuse to pregnancy to drug and alcohol abuse.

A little while ago, a young lady student of mine, who was very pretty and bright, was being sexually abused by her stepfather. The nurse got the girl removed from the home.

We may say now that we can do without nurses, but we will miss them when something happens that could have been prevented.

VIC PLAYER, History teacher and football coach, Lincoln Preparatory School