Nursing Group Backs Knoxville Representative’s Proposals to Improve School Nurse Access

Stock photo of a school nurse (Photo by RDNE Stock project/Pexels)

State Representative Elaine Davis, R-Knoxville, says a personal experience led her to champion an effort to improve access to school nurses.

Speaking with the Tennessee Firefly’s On the Fly Podcast earlier this month, Davis said doctors diagnosed her son with Type 1 Diabetes at age one. She says his condition really opened her eyes to the need for schools to have school nurses.

“When it got close to him being able to go to school, it was the first time I’d ever really thought about how he was going to be taken care of at school,” Davis said. “There’s not a nurse in every school, but yet my son, with regard to testing his blood sugar and giving insulin, those are medical procedures that are required in statute that only a nurse can do.”

This year, Davis filed three bills to not only help schools staff nurses but also provide additional flexibility and higher salaries.

What Each Bill Does

House Bill 2329 is the most far-reaching of the three bills. It would create a grant program for school districts that need nurses to help cover their salaries and benefits.

Davis says the plan could add 421 school nurses across the state if fully funded. Districts with more students with chronic illness would receive priority for the funds, and Davis said the money would also help districts with a nurse who’s only available to certain students.

“There might be a nurse that is assigned to a school, but those might be paid with federal dollars, and they’re for a specific student. This grant is set up for the general population, so that they can respond in emergent situations,” Davis said.

House Bill 1675 would provide higher pay for school nurses who hold accreditation from the National Certified School Nurse Association, while  House Bill 1550 would free up school nurses to use new epinephrine delivery methods, including nasal sprays. The current statute only allows for auto-injectors.

The epinephrine legislation faces a vote today in the House Finance, Ways, and Means Committee, while the other bills are awaiting passage of the state budget.

Nursing Support

All three bills have the backing of the National Association of School Nurses

Tennessee Chapter Director Dr. Shanna Groom says the effort is vitally important as schools are seeing more “medically fragile” students than they were two decades ago.

“You have to have that school nurse in place to help take care of those tube feedings, those catheterizations, the trachs, the ventilators, asthma, diabetes,” said Groom. “School nursing is no longer ice and Band-Aids. That is really what people think that we do, and that is not what we do. We are taking care of those medically fragile, chronic health conditions.”

One additional benefit of school nurses is classroom attendance. Groom says research shows school nurses who see students send them back to the classroom after the visit 89 percent of the time.

For other school staff that return rate is 80 percent.

“Those school nurses develop relationships with those students and staff in that school setting and so they start to really be able to use that experience to help just triage people just so much quicker and so much easier because they’ll understand, maybe what’s going on in that family home or if that student comes in with a belly ache it could be because they’re having a big TCAP test that day, or there could be a flu bug going around, or there could be something going on at home,“ said Davis.