Effective strategies for school nurses to deal with stress
School nurses like you play a key role in student healthcare management and it often has you juggling multiple priorities to meet growing workplace expectations. This can put you under a lot of undue stress, directly impacting your everyday activities. In a research study, 48.5% of school nurses reported medication errors, with missed doses at 79.7% being the most common category of error. A contributing factor could be the responsibility for a large number of students, which in itself can be a reason for stress in school nurses. This article looks into factors causing stress in school nurses, how technology can help and, the importance of having a school nurse health system in schools. What are the reasons for stress in school nurses? School nurses help students in managing factors affecting their physical and mental health, and often, ignore your own health in the process. At educational institutions, school nurses have: 1. Growing administrative workloads 2. Responsibility of caring for more children than they can These are school nurses’ challenges put broadly. Let’s look at them in a little bit of detail: Major Administrative workloads Collecting health forms and taking care of the data, managing immunization compliances, school health report creation, timely medication administration, emergency care of students and staff are some of the many activities that school nurses manage every day. Using paper-based processes to manage these activities is not just time-consuming, but involves significant effort from you, putting you under a lot of stress. Responsibility for more children NASN recommends 1 school nurse for 750 perfectly healthy students and the ratio becomes 1:225 for students who need daily professional nursing services. However, today most school nurses work for more children than they can care for, resulting in their growing anxiety. There are other stress factors that come as part of the job, affecting their performance and overall quality of student care. Putting school nurses at ease To avoid such adverse situations that school nurses face, you can use a system like EduHealth. EduHealth is an all in one school health management software solution. School nurses can avoid anxiety to great extent with the help of school nurse health systems. An efficient school heath management software like EduHealth includes functions that simplify the management of the following student data like: Digital records of students’ health history with allergy information, information on previous medical ailments and comprehensive medical records Electronic immunizations records, medical prescriptions, and related health records Authorization letters from doctors and parent’s notes Doctor visit records And the system can even help you with medication reminders so you never miss another dose of your student’s medication. School nurses can access all records with a click of a button. And you can even generate detailed reports, taking away a whole lot of effort you’d previously put into searching for right information on paper documents. And the benefits don’t end here. This way, EduHealth helps you stay in control of your tasks, give students the care they deserve and ensure medication safety without stressing you out. What is the importance of a school health management software? An efficient school health management software is a must-have for educational institutions. Schools should adopt technology solutions that are capable of enabling school nurses and ensure delivery of quality medical care for the students at the school. EduHealth’s user-friendly dashboard clearly lists the school nurse’s tasks for the day, and facilitates an environment for school nurses to perform their tasks quickly and free of errors. Without proper health management software, school nurses will run into problems like: Reduced productivity Poor mental and physical health Dissatisfaction at work How can health management software support school nurses overcome such problems? For starters, it helps you in creating daily routines and keeps you focussed on your duties. School health management software can assure: Improved collaboration with different participants in the student health framework Quick creation and retrieval of students’ medical file Prompt feedback mechanism Technology awareness among school nurses Conclusion: Technological innovations have simplified jobs for many – including school nurses. School health management software systems have made access to important health documents so much easier, enabling the efficient delivery of care. With a strong support environment, powered by electronic health record system EduHealth, school nurses are in a better position to meet growing and changing healthcare expectations and are not under undue stress of administrative workloads.
