School nurse case management: Achieving health and educational outcomes

Educators and healthcare professionals alike understand that healthy studetns are likely to be succesful learners.The goal of school nurse case management is to support students so that they are ready to learn. This presentation describes the outcomes of a four year process improvement project that showed the impact of school nurse case management on attendance, behavior, academic performance, quality of life, and health compliance in a large southeastern urban school district. Recognizing a need for standardized practice, the School Health Leadership Team created a case management policy, procedures, forms, a data collection process, and ongoing education and mentoring. These supports enabled school nurses to select students with health and learning needs, target specific outcomes, implement effective interventions and activities and document the gains made. In the four years of this project, 84% of the students case managed improved in one or more of the five targeted areas.