May 2024:

The MLO Minute: “Thank a School Nurse — and all Nurses — This Week!” 

By Dennis McAndrews, Esq., Founder and Managing Partner Emeritus — 

This week is National Nurses Week, and it provides a wonderful opportunity to recognize the incredible work in so many areas of our healthcare system by nurses. As part of our special education practice, we see firsthand the outstanding and tireless work in our educational settings by school nurses. The responsibilities of school nurses today have dramatically expanded in recent years and at MLO we take this week to recognize their tireless efforts.

Some of us who are a bit older remember school nurses having a modest role which included taking temperatures, providing a place to lie down when we didn’t feel well, distributing bandaids, and calling a parent to pick up a sick child. These tasks remain, of course, but are now a fraction of the complex duties of a school nurse. In contemporary educational settings, these duties often include assisting with mental health crises, and in a recent discussion with a school nurse, she estimated to me that 50% of her time is now spent on addressing mental health matters.

Additionally, school nurses are often part of special education teams in developing and delivering critical healthcare services for children with disabilities as part of their Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) or Section 504 service plans.  They also conduct healthcare screenings, maintain health records, develop schoolwide health management plans, provide reporting to multiple state agencies, monitor student immunization, coordinate healthcare clinics, administer medications, and collaborate with instructional personnel regarding student healthcare needs. An informative list of the expansive duties of contemporary school nurses can be found at the following link by clicking here.

I recognize that I am partial to nurses, as my wife, Liz, has been an outstanding Certified Nurse Practitioner for over 40 years. Liz has been a groundbreaker in many areas of advanced nursing practice in Pennsylvania, and in the teaching part of her career, she helped train hundreds of outstanding Nurse Practitioners. Thank you to Liz and nurses everywhere!