SOUTH HADLEY — Strained by an increasing student population, cumbersome state mandates, lengthy documentation requirements and students’ increasing emotional support needs, school nurses are asking administrators for more help.
School nurse leader Eileen Garvey told School Committee members at its May 7 meeting that the district’s four nurses are having trouble keeping up.
“I feel like lately the nursing staff is literally just keeping our head barely above water,” Garvey said at the meeting.
So far this school year, South Hadley nurses have handled more than 18,971 student visits, Garvey said, far more than the 16,356 treated all of last year. She said two nurses in the middle school and high school are seeing between 40 and 80 students a day. Others nurses see approximately 20 to 40 students a day.
“I’d love for the committee to look at increasing the amount of nursing staff. Honestly, we could use it,” Garvey said.
Garvey started working as a school nurse in South Hadley 18 years ago when there were four nurses in the district. Now, she said, the student population has doubled with no increase to the nursing staff, which she said is strapped with more responsibilities like state-mandated screenings and exhaustive documentation of student visits.
A discussion about the South Hadley school district potentially joining a pilot fluoride varnish program raised questions about whether the nurses in South Hadley are equipped to handle the additional responsibilities. A local retired pediatrician, Dr. Robert Abrams, raised the idea and has been a strong proponent, Garvey said.
“I explained to him that while I thought it was a great program, the nursing services were pretty, you know, maxed out regarding what they were hoping to contribute towards that program,” Garvey said.
Superintendent Nicholas Young said there is an “enormous amount” of enthusiasm for the fluoride program, but shared Garvey’s concerns.
“The concern has always been not that this wasn’t a wonderful program — it’s just so time-consuming that the staffing isn’t able to assume those additional responsibilities,” Young said.
Young said the School Committee will look at the evidence Garvey presented and come up with a proposal as to how to better serve the nurses’ needs.
Newly elected School Committee member Allison Schlachter asked how many students visit a school nurse with anxiety-related issues. Garvey estimated that 30 percent of school nurse visits are related to emotional needs.
Young acknowledged that more students are seeking help for emotional issues, a positive trend that gives them more access to services they need, but one that places an additional strain on the nurses.
“We appreciate there are more kids with emotional needs — no one would dispute that,” Young said. “More kids with emotional needs puts more strain on counselors, nurses and probably parents, too.”
Young mentioned an additional strain placed on the nurses: filing workers’ compensation claims. Garvey said it is not typical for school nurses to deal with workers’ compensation, and each case can take up to an hour of their time. Years ago, she said, the nurses took on the additional responsibility as a stipulation for receiving raises.
“I don’t know how it’s become so much of our job, and there’s just a big amount of paperwork to deal with that,” Garvey said. “There’s a lot of legality behind workers’ comp — I mean, I don’t even know all the gist of workers’ comp. We do our best.”
In the last four years, each of the four school buildings has generated up to 60 workers’ compensation forms, Garvey said.
Potential solutions raised by Garvey include paraprofessional health aides to assist with documentation, or a floating nurse who visits each of the schools as needed. Garvey mentioned that in other districts a nurse leader in her position does not see students, but manages the administrative functions of the nurses’ offices day-to-day.
While principals have been supportive of the nurses’ requests for help, nurses say they remain overwhelmed by their workload.
“We’ve never come and asked the School Committee this but I just beg you to at least look at our numbers,” Garvey said. “And I plead with you, we feel like something has got to give a little bit pretty soon.”
Sarah Robertson can be reached at srobertson@gazettenet.com.