Primary Purpose
The professional school nurse is responsible for planning, implementing, coordinating, and evaluating school health services within the context of the Coordinated School Health Program Model
The school nurse serves in the roles of program manager/coordinator, case manager/direct care provider, collaborator/advocate, educator, and counselor for the school district
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
The complex role of the school nurse demands, but is not limited to, understanding and knowledge of:
- Community, including the community as a system and aggregates as clients
- Pediatric/Adolescent Nursing
- Public Health/Community Health Nursing
- Health counseling, mental health crisis interventions
- Communicable Disease
- Applicable laws, regulations, and standards pertaining to school nursing practice (NC Nurse Practice Act, Standards of School Nursing Practice, and the Eight Components of a Coordinated School Health Program)
- School health law
- Special education legislation and services
- Case finding, case management, and health advocacy
- Program management, including personnel supervision
- Family theory, assessment, and intervention
- Leadership, networking, and collaboration
- Ethnic and cultural sensitivity and competence
- Contemporary health and psychosocial issues that influence children, families, and the community
- Health care delivery systems and the concepts of primary health care
- Building student, staff, and family capacity for adaptation, self-management, self-advocacy, and learning
- School as a non-traditional health care setting
- Development, management, and evaluation of school health programs
- Environmental health within the school community
Skills related to this important role include the ability to:
- Plan, coordinate, and supervise the work of others
- Deal tactfully with others and exercise good judgment in appraising situations
- Make independent and timely nursing decisions and triage
- Secure the cooperation and respect of students, faculty, and staff
- Elicit needed information and maintain effective working relationships
- Collect data to direct evidence-based practice
- Record accurately services rendered and interpret and explain records, reports, activities, health care plans, accommodations, and medical interventions
- Identify health-related barriers to learning (i.e., at-risk behaviors, financial, cultural, economical etc.)
Duties, Responsibilities, and Essential Job Functions
The professional school nurse within YCS is responsible for planning, implementing, coordinating, and evaluating school health services that:
- Maximize the quantity of in-class time by reducing the incidence of health-related absenteeism
- Eliminate or minimize health problems that impair learning
- Promote the highest degree of independent function possible
- Promote student, staff, and community awareness of and participation in health behaviors
Standards of Care
- Assessment: Collects comprehensive data pertinent to the client’s health or situation
- Diagnosis: Analyzes the assessment data to determine the nursing diagnosis or issues
- Outcomes Identification: Identifies goals
- Planning: Develops a plan, as needed, to obtain goals
- Implementation: Implements plans through coordination of care, health teaching, and health promotion and consultation to influence the identified plan, enhance the abilities of others, and effect change
- Evaluation: Evaluates progress towards attainment of outcomes
Standards of Professional Performance
- Quality of Practice: Systematically enhances the quality and effectiveness of nursing practice
- Education: Attains knowledge and competency that reflects current school nursing practice
- Professional Practice Evaluation: Evaluates one’s own nursing practice in relation to professional practice standards and guidelines, relevant statutes, rules, and regulations
- Collegiality: Interacts with and contributes to the professional development of peers and school personnel as colleagues
- Collaboration: Collaborates with the client, the family, school staff, and others in the conduct of school nursing practice
- Ethics: Integrates ethical provisions in all areas of practice
- Research: Integrates research findings into practice
- Resource Utilization: Considers factors related to safety, effectiveness, costs, and impact on practice in the planning and delivery of school nursing services
- Leadership: Provides leadership in the professional practice setting and the profession
- Management: Assists in the management of school health services
Performance and Work Load Standards
- Attend the New School Nurse Orientation and follow-up sessions as indicated
- Collect data for the NC DHHS School Health Nursing Survey and Program Summary (End of Year Report)
Job Qualifications
- Registered Nurse, currently licensed in North Carolina
- Baccalaureate degree in nursing and working toward national school nurse certification, with the stipulation that certification be completed within 3 years of hire date
DISCLAIMER: This is not necessarily an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties,
skills, efforts, requirements, or working conditions associated with the job. While this is
intended to be an accurate reflection of the current job, management reserves the right to
revise the job or to require that other or different tasks be performed as assigned.