More than a third of US schools don’t have a single nurse on-site – despite record rates of disease and mental health problems in students

More than a third of US schools do not have a single full-time school nurse, despite record rates of disease and mental health problems in students.

Only 66 percent of K-12 schools have access to a full-time school nurse, according to a 2021 survey by the National Association of School Nurses (NASN).

California has just one nurse for every 2,410 students in the state, for example, while Missouri has around one nurse for every 718 students.

Evidence shows that schools that don’t have a nurse on site have triple the amount of absences due to illness compared to schools that do.

It comes as America is dealing with high rates of chronic illnesses among K-12 students, including diabetes and asthma, plus record rates of mental health issues, which evidence suggests were exacerbated by school closures during the Covid pandemic.

Only 66 percent of K-12 schools have access to a full-time school nurse, according to a 2021 survey by the National Association of School Nurses (NASN)

The pandemic placed an extra burden on school nurses’ shoulders as they had to track cases and exposures (stock pic)

Schools are also struggling to hire and retain nurses because hospitals are offering much higher salaries than schools, coupled with an overall shortage of nurses nationally. 

Jodi Bobbitt is the only school nurse for the 600 pupils at William Ramsay Elementary in Alexandria, Virginia.

She is the port of call for medications, education about health care and routine health checks.

She is also in charge of tracking students’ vaccinations, distributing local healthcare resources to parents and conveying tricky messages to them, for instance, sexually transmitted infections and signs of depression and anxiety among students.

In her last job, she worked across two or three school buildings in the same district.

The pandemic placed an extra burden on school nurses’ shoulders as they had to track cases and exposures.

They also took the heat from anti-maskers and maskers and anti-vaxx and pro-vacc parents and were the point of contact when students had to quarantine.

Kate King, president of the NASN, told CBS News that while ‘school nurses are used to interacting with parents who are angry,’ due to the pandemic, ‘that anger just got to levels we had never seen before.’

When schools don’t have a nurse onsite, children’s attendance suffers.

A study from the Journal of School Nursing found that sick or injured students were sent home 18 percent of the time when assessed by an unlicensed school employee, such as a regular teacher, while only five percent were sent home after a school nurse looked at them.

At the start of the term this year, a Kentucky school district was forced to cancel classes less than two weeks after reopening after swathes of students were hit by a ‘tripledemic’ of flu, Covid and strep throat outbreaks.

Ms King said that although some teachers and admin staff at schools are trying to learn how to handle injuries and illnesses themselves, it ‘doesn’t take the place of having a school nurse who can respond immediately.’

By law, schools do not have to have school nurses, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that there should be at least one full-time nurse per 750 students.

Most schools are way off this target. Schools without a dedicated nurse may share one with other campuses or not have one at all. 

School nurses in California have a particularly hefty workload. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, there is just one nurse for every 2,410 students in the state.