For Release: IMMEDIATE
Date: October 13, 2005

Numbers, duties of school nurses expanding

RALEIGH— The ratio of school nurses to public school students has improved over the past year, according to the Annual School Health Services Report for Public Schools released Thursday, Oct. 13, by the N.C. Division of Public Health. In addition, the report shows that the duties of school nurses are growing.

The number of North Carolina school districts meeting national and state recommendations for numbers of students per school nurse increased from 10 to 21 in 2004-2005. The recommended ratio is 1:750, meaning that each school nurse should have no more than 750 students in her/his care.

North Carolina school nurses had an average of 300 fewer students in their care in the 2004-05 school year than they did in 2003-04. The statewide school nurse-to-student ratio declined from 1 nurse per1,897 students in 2003-04 to 1 per1,593 students in 2004-05. However, 94 of the state’s 115 local education agencies (LEAs) still had nurse-to-student ratios higher than the recommended 750 students per school nurse.

State Health Director Leah Devlin, speaking to more than 500 school nurses at their annual school nurse conference, said most of the improvement came from 145 new school nurse positions provided by the General Assembly in August 2004.

Eighty of the new positions are permanent positions. Sixty-five are time-limited positions, for which funding will expire May 31, 2006.

The improved nurse/student ratio took into account increased student enrollment across the state– almost 21,000 new students entered North Carolina schools in the 2004-2005 school year. If this level of growth continues next year, it will require 27 new school nurses just to keep the ratio at its same level, Devlin said.

“ School nurses are the cornerstone of our School Health Initiative,” Devlin said. “They help keep our students healthy and ready to learn and they help students develop healthy behaviors that will help lead to a healthy and productive future.”

She pointed out that more students are coming to school with chronic illnesses, and the need for daily invasive procedures is increasing. These medical procedures include nebulizer treatments, glucagon injections, tube feedings, urinary catheterizations, tracheostomy care, and blood glucose monitoring.

The report showed 197,000 students presented with chronic illnesses or special health care needs in 2004-2005 – that's 15 percent of the state’s students, an increase of 3 percent from the previous year.

More than 16,000 students needed invasive procedures – an increase of more than 2,000 from 2003-2004.

While Devlin and the group celebrated the improved school nurse-to-student ratio, they worried about the number of schools that still have extraordinarily high ratios of students to nurses.

Twenty-six school districts in the state still have a ratio above 1:2,000—more than 2,000 students per nurse; five have a ratio above 1:3000; and three have a ratio above 1:4,000, with more than 4,000 students per school nurse.

“ A growing body of research tells us that today’s students are less healthy and less ready to learn than were their parents a generation ago,” said Dr. Devlin. “They are bringing to school many complex health needs that interfere with their ability to learn and to reach their full potential. We cannot afford to leave these needs unmet because we have too few school nurses. One school nurse cannot meet the needs of 1,000 to 4,000 students,” she said.

“ We must find a way to make the investment to provide a 1:750 school nurse to student ratio in every school in North Carolina,” Dr. Devlin said. “The consequences of not doing so will be very costly down the road.”

The full report is available on Web on the N.C. Public Health homepage, www.ncpublichealth.com. The report was released at a statewide training conference for school nurses in Research Triangle Park. The conference was sponsored by the Public Health Leadership Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health, the Women’s and Children’s Health Section of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, and the School Nurses Association of North Carolina.

#

###