American Nurses Association
600 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Suite 100-West
Washington, DC 20024-2571
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 2, 1998
CONTACT:
Michael Stewart, 202-651-7048
[email protected]
Michelle Slattery, 202-651-7023
[email protected]
http://www.nursingworld.org
* * * MEDIA ADVISORY * * *
ANA OFFERS INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES WITH EXPERTS ON CHILDREN'S HEALTH IN THE SCHOOLS
ANA will offer reporters opportunities from Monday, April 27, through Friday, May 1, to interview registered nurses (RNs) who serve on the front line of delivering health care to America's children nationwide. These nurse-experts will be available to reporters for interviews by phone and e-mail during pre-scheduled time-slots. Reporters taking part in this 4/27-5/1 remote briefing opportunity will be sent an advance kit containing contact information and interview availability time-slots for the nurse-experts, as well as background information on the delivery of health care services to our nation's school children. Please contact either Michael Stewart or Michelle Slattery in ANA Communications by phone or e-mail by Wednesday, April 15 to be sent a briefing advance kit.
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Washington, D.C.--- School nursing is not the profession it was when Baby Boom and Generation X parents attended school, but many Americans are unaware of the dramatic changes that have taken place in just the past few years and still retain a reassuring picture of their own trips to the school nurse's office for routine vaccinations or care. Youngsters attend school with a wide range of problems ranging from asthma and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to drug and alcohol dependence and HIV-infection. Many other children -- some scarred by violence in their homes, communities, or even in their own schools -- must cope with emotional disorders as they struggle for an education. Because of "inclusion" -- the movement to "mainstream" children with disabilities and chronic illnesses into regular schools -- school nurses may be feeding children with feeding tubes, suctioning tracheal tubes, handling catheterizations, and changing the diapers of students with illnesses like spina bifida. Today's parents who both work are less likely to take time off to care for sick children at home, and they often are unavailable if a school nurse calls to have an ill child taken home.
The American Nurses Association (ANA) is also concerned that it is not only RNs who are performing these complex and sometimes risky procedures, but teachers, teacher's aides, and school secretaries. In many areas, there are not enough school nurses, a situation blamed, in part, on a lack of funding. However, parents and school systems should not have to choose between providing children with a good education and appropriately meeting their basic health needs while in school.
In addition to the previously mentioned health care procedures, many of which once would have entailed hospitalization, non-RN personnel in many schools are called upon to dispense potent medications, to check the insulin levels of students with diabetes and to provide insulin injections. In some districts, school administrators do not allow the non-RNs a choice as to whether to serve in these ways. Meanwhile, school nurses frequently are held responsible, against their better judgment, for training these unlicensed -- and often unwilling and fearful -- care givers and for the outcomes of care over which they have no true oversight.
Many schools -- in fact, entire school districts -- have no nurse at all, despite having more acutely ill student populations. In some other locales, school nurses have become "circuit riders," forced against all logic, due to lack of funding for school health programs, to attempt to care for hundreds or thousands of children in several schools, sometimes spread over vast distances. However, many other students, even less fortunate, have no access whatsoever to RN care while in school. Thus, increasingly, these young people -- millions with no insurance coverage* -- have little or no connection with a health care professional, until illness drives them to an emergency room.
ANA is concerned about the health of the youngest Americans. RNs treat children in all settings, and nurses, like other citizens, are concerned on several levels about children's health. While RNs are America's largest health care profession, in many cases, they also are parents or grandparents of school-aged children. Nurses are members of America's communities and recognize that our children are our future, and that focusing on providing them a good education must be paired with a focus on ensuring their good health. Therefore, all nurses -- whether practicing in schools or in other settings ranging from hospitals to home care -- recognize the need for better health care delivery in schools.
[*The federal Agency for Health Care Policy and Research reports that (as of 1996, the latest year for which figures are available) 19.8 percent of children under 18 in single-parent families are uninsured, as are 13.8 percent of children in two-parent families.]
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Note to media: National Nurses Week is May 6-12, 1998. The week traditionally is a period of heightened national attention to the nursing profession and to the patients served by RNs. By participating in this remote briefing opportunity on children's health in the schools from April 27 through May 1, you can be a step ahead by obtaining important advance background and quotes you can use to prepare a story to appear during National Nurses Week. However, since children's health is a topic of perennial interest, the information you garner during an interview(s) can be used any time of year, of course -- not just during National Nurses Week.
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American Nurses Association is the only full-service professional organization representing the nation's 2.6 million Registered Nurses through its 53 constituent associations. ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Congress and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.
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