School Nurses Need More Training
May 13, 2001
With an increasing number of school children suffering from medical ailments, school nurses are dispensing more and more drugs. A nationwide survey of school nurses revealed that at least half had made medication errors over the past year. The nursing errors in administering medication included missed doses, overdoses, and dispensing the wrong medicine altogether. "The incidence of medication errors is not acceptable," the study concludes. "Ongoing efforts to develop national guidelines must continue."
Schools are increasingly becoming more than centers for education. Many school systems are buckling under the pressure to provide more services to their students in spite of a lack of funding. One such service is healthcare, which includes dispensing medications for illnesses such as asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and diabetes. "It's a huge issue. The school nurses are out there almost on their own," said lead author Ann Marie McCarthy, an associate nursing professor at the Iowa College of Nursing. "The context is that there simply are more children in school with health conditions requiring medication now than in the past," she said. "Children with complex health care needs used to be kept at home or placed in separate classrooms, but now they are integrated into regular classrooms," she added.
Even more disturbing is the finding that many school issued medications are not dispensed by nurses at all. Increasingly secretaries, health aides, teachers, parents and sometimes other students are doling out medications. The likelihood of medication error increases 3.1 times when a non-medically trained school employee dispenses such medication. The study found that "the meds in our schools are not given by school nurses. Seventy-five percent are given by others."
The results highlight the need to ensure "the people giving the meds who are not professionals are getting properly and consistently trained, supervised and evaluated," said Judy Igoe, director of the Office of School Health at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver and a 30-year veteran of the school nursing field. While 80% of schools have medical training programs for certain employees, most of these last only a couple of hours, not enough to properly train such employees.
The study found that almost 6% of all students regularly take medications at school. Since school nurses often cover several schools, these children often rely on secretaries and others to supply them with the proper medication. Researchers found that only 20% of the Nation's school districts have uniform healthcare policies. Without such standards, "you haven't got anything but one of those Charles Schulz cartoons of Lucy giving advice for 5 cents," Igoe said.
-- Article Courtesy of InjuryBoard.com
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