Tyrone Turner / DCist/WAMU
A shortage of D.C. school nurses has become so critical that about half of public and charter schools will not have a nurse on campus full-time this year.
While every school will still be covered by at least two nurses – one registered nurse (RN) and one licensed practitioner nurse (LPN) – those nurses will be shared among a cluster of four schools geographically close to one another. The nurses will be physically located at one school and will travel within their cluster. Schools that do not have a full-time nurse on site will be assigned a full-time health technician, who are trained to assist nurses but provide a limited range of services. (Technicians are required to have a First Aid Certification, AOM Certification, and Nursing Assistant, EMT, or Patient Care Technician Certification.)
That’s under a new work model created by DC Health and its grantee Children’s School Services (CSS), who say it’s a necessary short-term solution to the nursing shortage. Children’s National Hospital, which oversees CSS, says it’s “confident” in the model, which is designed to ensure that there is at least a nurse or technician available on campus at all times.
In each cluster, nurses are assigned to schools that have more students with serious medical needs as determined by data from student health records. Technicians are assigned to the schools with lesser need. The hospital noted that if they need assistance and a nurse is not immediately available,...
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