Should School Nurses be trained to deal with serious wounds?

I mentioned earlier that a school nurse has a different license then a nurse who might work at a hospital. I wonder if there is a state or national requirement states that a school nurse is required to have the 'public health nurse' and couldn't have school nurse who has a 'registered nurse' license instead. Just as importantly, I wonder if the salary associated with the registered nurse license, or another nurse license like it, would be too much to add to the school's budget and that the chances that that nurse's skills would be required by the school isn't high enough to warrant the cost.

I would think so. Since Doctors are so busy alot and the Nurse is their 24/7 almost.

That's highly likely. Registered nurses are in short supply in many parts of the country, to the point that a lot of nurses immigrate from places like the Philippines to fill open positions in the US. We just don't have enough of them to staff every school in the nation. Most schools are struggling to stay above water as it is.

That said, if a 20 minute lesson really could save lives, then sure, I'm all for it.

I just wonder if there would be an issue of culpability and insurance. For example, when I leave community health services to start my private practice in a few years as a mental health therapist I'll have to cover my insurance costs that should help me if, for example, a client of mine claims misconduct on my part or something else of that sort. Where I am now my company covers the insurance costs on my behalf. I would imagine that if a school nurse got the training required to deal with serious injuries that would come with issues of responsibility since with those new skills comes heavier responsibility and liability and a greater risk for consequences and backlash in cases where the nurse messes up or is convicted of messing up. Those insurance costs would likely be pretty high. With those new skills would also come the assumption of an increase in pay for that nurse. All of these things will start to add up.

I'm not against this training but I think it's a little less feasible then what we might think.

I guess I can see that. I just want to live in a world where I can go to a Nurse say "Hey, here's how you stop bleeding." Then the school buys some tourniquets. Those cost like $5-$10 a piece. I mean, keep two in a drawer. No damage you cause to a child stopping major blood flow is going to be worse than the blood flow itself.

But a real world example of how this can go bad. The one instance I used a tourniquet in real world: Myself and an Afghan soldier were shooting into a woodline where Taliban were approaching. A rocket hit near us and the Afghan lost his left leg from the knee down. I busted out my tourniquet. Doctrine teaches that while you get out and prepare the tourniquet, you press down above the wound with your knee. So the patient doesn't bleed out while you spend 15 seconds getting aid tools out. He passed out after I put the tourniquet on. I thought he died, but he actually passed out from the pain of my body weight on a crushed bone.

I could see some crazy parent going ape shit over physically hurting their child in order to save them. I'm sure a medical professional can tell you passing out can possibly lead to brain damage and all sorts of shit. That's probably also the most extreme example. I dunno...

I think it would be nice if most school nurses should be about as trained to the level of an EMT. The problem is an EMT has a partner, backup. If you have gun shot wounds, or wounds of any kind just having one person isn't enough. That's the real issue there is no middle ground between hang-nail and gun shot wound. If you have a trained EMT at school form 8AM to 2PM and they just sit on their ass all day they won't be satisfied in their job and they won't have enough to do.

The other issue is liability. At this point having an employee that administers medical treatment as one of your employees is just a HUGE legal liability because we allow people to second guess everything 'without cause' to second guess. You have to hire and EMT as school nurse, you have to have high level insurance covering them. The school nurse budget line would go from $20K a year to $135K a year, of which $100K is just insurance.

They'll have to be paid more I assume.

the high school that i went to didn't have a nurse. at least sometimes she wasn't there.

to answer your question, i kind of think so. i kind of think that it's a reliability type of deal with the students. if anything happens to the student from the nurse then the school would get in big trouble.