Editor's Note
Caring for School Kids
The school nurse at my high school was the butt of many jokes. With the irreverent bravado peculiar to adolescent males, boys would concoct epic sagas of their visit to her. A couple reported seeing the nurse for a stomach ache and being given a vile, white liquid and told to lie down for 15 minutes and then return to class. One, having decided that he was going to show this quack practitioner that he was not ready to go back to class, stuck his finger down his throat and vomited at the threshold of the nurse’s office. Wild rumors circulated about students who had gone into comas when the nurse ignored their high fevers. Likely, most of these tales were apocryphal; but clearly there was a disdain for this kindly woman that I never quite understood and that seemed beyond the usual reach of teenage cruelty.
Health care in schools is no longer a joke. Although kids still get the mundane colds and sore throats and suffer the indignities of acne and the ambiguities of adolescence, the stakes are higher in today’s schools. Sexual experimentation happens at an earlier and earlier age. Drug use is more common and has expanded beyond pot and alcohol to include prescription drugs (p. 47). Life-threatening violence has spread beyond inner-city schools.
Today, many parents are absent by necessity or by default. So when kids get sick or need medical advice, trips to the doctor’s office may not be possible. For the students who can’t get to the expertise they need, school-based clinics have brought the expertise to the student (p. 22). Immunizations, counseling, and medication doled out by well-trained nurse practitioners are a far-cry from the white liquid and a rest on the couch my friends received.
In fact, health professionals are trying to get kids off the couch. Our nationwide epidemic of obesity starts in childhood as kids substitute Xbox for exercise and fries for fruit, and schools and doctors are trying to do something about it. A pair of physicians, realizing that traditional exercise options don’t address the needs of children with health problems such as diabetes or obesity, have started a clinic-based fitness program (p. 12). Health class, another object of snickering in my high school days, is constantly retailoring itself so that kids learn what they need to know about health and disease in 2010 (p. 7).
I suspect my high school nurse might feel adrift in the maelstrom that confronts today’s schools and kids. But teachers and medical professionals are facing those stormy waters and helping kids navigate them. Schools can’t meet all the health care needs of kids, but clearly health and schools are inextricably linked. Not only should schools be safe, violence-free places, they also should act as health care repositories, simultaneously educating and treating kids as they prepare them for life ahead.
Charles R. Meyer, M.D., editor in chief Dr. Meyer can be reached at cmeyer1@fairview.org