School Nurses

[MeridaTheBold]

It has come up on a few threads recently and I'm interested to know if it differs from area to area. Any school we've attended or our DC has attended, has had a school nurse. Posters in England were saying they don't have school nurses. It made me wonder if this was a difference between the two countries or if we've just been fortunate to have nurses in our schools. So does your DCs' school have a nurse?
ime they're not all qualified nurses. They might be a first aider rather than a nurse but their sole purpose is to look after DCs who are sick or injured. They're not teachers iyswim.

Nope, DC have never had a school nurse in primary or secondary. Some have police officer but DC never had those either.

Usually it's just someone from the school office (presumably a first aider) that looks after sick DC (well gives them a wet paper towel and makes them sit in the corridor waiting to be collected)

There is a school nursing team who visit schools but not a nurse in each school. In Southwark where I work the nurses come to do flu vaccines, height and weight check, and to see children we have referred to them. They also do the eyesight tests in Reception. There must be other things they do but I don't know much more about it.

In our (authority) school there is not a school nurse on site. However each school has a designated “school nurse” who is part of the community health team - you can be referred to the school nurse for things like bedwetting, diet and nutritional problems, sleep etc. They sort of take over from the health visitor role once a child is school age.

That's interesting. Are you all in Scotland or England or elsewhere? I didn't realise how unusual we were.

I'm in Scotland OP, at least one of the other posters hasn't clocked we are talking in Scotsnet but useful info in terms of a comparison all the same.

There's no school nurse in my boys school, we're in Scotland.

My children's school both have qualified nurses. However, they are boarding schools.

Here's a list of school nurse provision in each Scottish health board.

There might not be a nurse based in every school but there will be a nurse in the health board allocated to the school. Their remit will vary between boards.

enquire.org.uk/service/service_types/school-nurse-contacts/

Each school will also have an informal person usually office or TA staff who looom after sick and injured children until parents collect them.

Thanks @Invisimamma I had seen that but it wasn't clear to me if those nurses were actually in schools or based in the community and then pupils could be referred to them. I think it's quite different having a nurse on-site rather than having an arm's length service.

I know there was an initiative connected to schools in deprived areas and tbh that might have been how my school had a nurse when I was growing up. I'd always just taken it for granted.

They are usually not on site and will cover a cluster of schools and visit them as required, or spend allocated slot of time in each on a rota basis.

Some of the bigger secondary schools will have a nurse on site. But it is not the norm anymore.

I remember our school nurse used to give out the condoms and sanitary products. There was a sick bay room with a bed you could have a wee lie down if you wanted to. Skip class by feigning illness.
She also to my friend to walk off a broken ankle because he was 'at it' 😲. This was early 00s.

They have them in London but they cover numerous schools

Have some schools never had them or were they phased out because of budget cuts?
We had a nursing bay with a bed and the nurse also had an adjoining office.

I work in Aberdeenshire and there are school nurses up there.
I worked in Fife for 4 years as well and they were there too.

Different councils must have different approaches then. In the current climate, it makes sense to me to have school nurses actually based in schools so teachers can maintain distancing and nurses in PPE can decide if pupils need to be sent home.

School nurse is shared between a few schools here.

I don’t know about now but we definitely had none in any of the schools I went to (school career 1987-2000)

My dds school had a school nurse she was a retired nurse but a friend of mine was a school nurse but she was an advanced first aider so I think it differs from school to school..our high school also hasa police officer attached