(FRANKFORT, Ky.) -- To honor the nearly 60,000 school nurses employed nationwide, May 12 has been designated National School Nurse Day by the National Association of School Nurses.
The Kentucky Department of Education encourages everyone to honor the approximately 450 school nurses who serve more than 600,000 students every year in the state. With the Kentucky Board of Education's increased emphasis on school health issues, the Department of Education has urged local districts and school-based decision making councils to incorporate the Coordinated School Health Model endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into their own school health programs. School nurses are crucial to the success of those programs.
Among their many responsibilities, school nurses promote health and safety; intervene with actual and potential health problems; provide case management services; and actively collaborate with others to build student/family capacity for self management, self advocacy and learning. They provide these services to increasingly large numbers of students and frequently more than one school building. School nurses have played a vital role in improving the health and well being of our nation’s children, sometimes providing the only health care attention some children receive.
Far from being merely dispensers of bandages and aspirin, school nurses assist students, teachers and staff with chronic health issues, such as asthma, obesity, depression and other long-term health problems.
The National Association of School Nurses is a non-profit specialty nursing organization incorporated in 1979. It represents school nurses exclusively and has more than 11,000 members nationwide. National School Nurse Day began in 1972 as a way to recognize the contributions of school nurses. For more information, visit NASN's Web site by clicking here.
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