SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) -There is a large gap between the healthcare children receive while at school in Utah and other states. In fact, Utah ranks 49th in the nation for the number of school nurses assigned to kids.
Utah's bottom of the list ranking is a concern for school nurses who say more nurses equals less absenteeism and healthier kids."
Stacy Drew is one of six school nurses in the Canyons School District where there are more than 33-thousand students. "Sometimes we are the only medical professional the under-insured or uninsured students will see, and so we do the best we can with what we have."
Drew says statistics show four out of every 25 students have health conditions that could be a barrier to learning in the classroom, or even life threatening. "We have lots of kids in the school with seizures, anaphylactic reactions to various things, peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, and what we do is kind of come up with the emergency plans."
In Utah there is one nurse for every 3,637 students, but in some districts that number is much higher. For example, in the Davis School District there is one school nurse for every 6,006 students, and in Logan, it’s one for 6,133.
Stacy Drew says school nurse duty now extends beyond assessing student health, identifying vision and hearing problems, administering medication and caring for students in an emergency situation. Now, they are also responsible for training others in the school to do all of those things in their absence. "Really we act more as a case manager to help teachers and office staff handle the situation in an emergency."
To make sure students are safe, they create a custom emergency health program for each student they are responsible for.
Drew says more school nurses would allow them to add more programs and ultimately provide better care for their students, but she says in the current economy more funding isn’t likely. She just hopes Utah lawmakers don’t cut spending this year.
