School Nursing: A Generalized or a Specialized Service?

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Abstract
At a time when the most efficient use of existing health personnel is a burning issue, school nursing has grown more rapidly than generalized public health nursing. As a result: (1) recruiting and retaining generalized public health nurses has become more difficult; (2) a schism in public health nursing has appeared; (3) parallel services are being provided by 2 tax-supported agencies with consequent duplication, overlapping, gaps, confusion, added expense and fragmentation of service; (4) demands on the time of generalized public health nurses continue to increase; and (5) intensive services are being provided to one segment of the population while other population groups are relatively neglected. In particular, the maternal and child health services are receiving less public health nursing time than in desirable. The wisdom of maintaining separate school health nursing services is questioned on several grounds. Some studies have shown that nursing time is not well utilized in schools. Some problems in the administration and supervision of the school health program make maintaining the highest quality of service difficult. In order that the limited number of nurses available for community health services be used to best advantage, the following steps are recommended: (1) improvement of personnel policies in agencies employing generalized public health nurses; (2) mobilization of greater community understanding and support of the public health program; (3) analysis of community nursing services, transfer of non-nursing tasks to other personnel and setting of priorities; and (4) extension of combined nursing services.

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