Congress considers adding school nurses

From the [Newark] Star-Ledger:

As more kids with more complicated health issues are attending mainstream public schools, school nurses are being called upon to provide care they once administered only in hospitals. A bill pending in Congress would offer grants to states to help pay for more school nurses.

Federal statistics say the number of students with chronic or acute health problems like leukemia, diabetes and asthma has doubled in recent years. “They’re actually managing more children with special needs, and we’re able to keep them in the school setting as a result of the school nurses,” said a doctor who serves 15 school districts in central New Jersey. “The kids have more complex medical issues. It’s not uncommon for kids to have feeding tubes, tracheostomies.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, cancer, chronic illness, diabetes, education, medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.