A School’s Chief Wellness Officer – The School Nurse

This article is reposted here with permission from the author, Robin Cogan, MEd, RN, NCSN, from her blog, The Relentless School Nurse.

The school nurse is your child’s Chief Wellness Officer! So first things first:  be sure your school has a school nurse in your child’s building every day. If not, there are 55 million reasons to have one. School nurses have access to 95% of our nation’s 55 million children every day, all day. We are the dedicated, licensed health professionals in your school community, whose eyes and ears are an extension of yours.

The history of school nursing goes back more than 100 years, to the tenements of New York City, when Lina Rogers Struthers became the first school nurse. She was assigned to cover 4 schools with over 10,000 students as an experiment to see if onsite care would improve student attendance. Not surprisingly, and with few resources, Ms. Struthers made a significant impact in decreasing absenteeism by 90% within the first six months of her assignment. Word quickly spread and in the next school year there were more than 27 school nurses working in NY schools. By 1914, there were over 400 school nurses assigned to NY city schools, and Los Angeles joined the trend.

Fast-forward more than 100 years, and you will find school nurses are working diligently across the country to provide comprehensive health services to our nation’s children, school staff, and the community at large. We are the Chief Wellness Officer (CWO)  at schools which means we are tasked with creating a culture of health and well-being so our children are safe, healthy and ready to learn. CWO’s have an enormous task, but we are more than are up for the challenge. (continue reading here)

HealthCetera producer and host Barbara Glickstein interviewed Robin Cogan for Little Water Radio. You can here the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:51 — 25.9MB)

Subscribe: RSS