A need for nursing

District 5 looking for school health coordinator

By DEVON COPELAND - dcopeland@thestate.com

For years, the phrase “school nurse” might have conjured images of nurses bandaging scrapes and directing students to relax on cots until stomachaches went away.

And while nurses do see a lot of those kinds of concerns, clinics in Midlands area schools are starting to more closely resemble hospital examination rooms.

“Basically every day is different,” said Ginny Sightler, a nurse at Dutch Fork High. “You never know what you’re going to get in the school system.”

That’s the reason why she chose the job.

That’s also why Lexington-Richland 5 nurses this spring requested — and received — funding to hire a school nurse coordinator to oversee health operations.

Board members also approved hiring additional nurses for Dutch Fork and Irmo High schools.

“We do know that the workload has increased for our nurses for a number of reasons,” said Marlene Metts, director of special services — citing the district’s growth, the increase in students with chronic health needs such as diabetes, and recent laws requiring individual health care plans for those students.

Officials are screening applicants for the new coordinator job.

“Even though it is an administrative position, just with the nature of the job, it’s going to have to be very hands-on,” she said.

The school nurse coordinator might act as an on-call nurse if a nurse is absent and a substitute unavailable.

Earlier this year, District 5 nurses completed a survey tallying how many students they saw in a 10-day period.

Nurses working in the district’s elementary schools had more than 3,900 visits from students; middle schools, more than 2,500; and high schools, more than 1,700.

“You know you’re doing it on a daily basis and you’re tired when you go home,” Sightler said, “but it was such a shock to hear those numbers.”

Nearly 400 of those visits were from students who needed diabetes monitoring and tube feedings.

Although nurses currently report to their school principal, administrators said the increasingly medical environment makes it all the more important to have a supervisor with a health care background.

The state Education Department does not require school districts to report whether they have a nursing coordinator.

During the 2003-04 school year, 79 of the state’s 85 school districts participated in a staffing survey. Of those districts more than half said they had a nursing coordinator/supervisor who was a registered nurse.

Nurses and administrators said they hope the new position will improve health services at schools and ensure student safety.

A couple of years ago, Sightler said she had a student that required tube feedings. The student had a “Do Not Resuscitate” order in case something happened.

“That was kind of scary,” she recalled. “A nurse supervisor would have been nice.”

Reach Copeland at (803) 771-8485