The preventive and health promotion tasks and target groups of school nurses, partners in school health promotion - present and future assessing improvements through the responses of school nurses

Abstract

Background: For pupils in public education, school health care (school doctor, school nurses) provide a continuous preventive service. According to the interview with the school nurses, I tried to understand their tasks, their future vision as well as their partners in school health promotion.

Methodology: My qualitative, cross-sectional, exploratory research on full-time school nurses in Western-Transdanubia using a focus group interview method. The sample was selected once (n=14). The data was collected under the guidance of a double moderator. Descriptive statistical methods were used to describe the sample characteristics to describe the characteristics of the sample, followed by the processing of the text of the focus group discussion content analysis. The exploratory and analytical methods were not sharply separated. The survey was conducted in an ethical manner.

Results: The average age of the respondents was 46.57 years, the average number of years they had been a school nurse was 20.07 years and the average number of schools in which a school nurse had worked was two. My results confirmed that school nurses in the primary health care services system carried out their daily activities on the axis of risk-oriented and health-oriented health promotion. In the present, care was characterised by decreasing pupil numbers and increasing tasks, with rising mental health problems, pupil numbers requiring increased care and a high turnover of pupils between institutions. The primary target groups of the nurses are pupils, but they can also be school staff. School nurses carry out their preventive-curative tasks: screening, care, vaccination, school hygiene, with professional knowledge, which should be documented in a standardised ICT-based system. According to the opinion of the nurses, health promotion is a very important and daily task in their work and is present in all their activities. Respondents do not see the ideal health promoter's work as a one-man job, but project many other professional partners, "helpers". In order to improve the quality of school nurses' work, the nurses perceive a need for practice-oriented methodological training based on strengthening personal and methodological competences, with a focus on health promotion.

Conclusions: At local level, it would be useful if all the professionals involved in school health promotion could work together as a team to form a so-called health coalition.  The preventive-curative tasks of the school nurse are embedded in the health promotion tasks on the basis of information, health education and health promotion. The future goal is to make full-time school nurses available in all primary and secondary schools, and to ensure equal opportunities in this respect in all schools, large and small, in all municipalities.