SCHOOL NURSING AND HEALTH CARE NEEDS OF HOMELESS CHILDREN.
Contributors: Temple University.
Published: 1995
Number of pages: 88
Subjects: Education, Health.; Health Sciences, Nursing.; Sociology, Individual and Family Studies.
Description: The purpose of this study is to describe the impact of the health status of homeless children on school nursing. The aim of the study is to derive implications for program development for school nurse education.

The federal recommendations and national objectives, the Public School Code and Health Regulations of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Official Policy and Procedures of the School District of Philadelphia, as all address health care of children were found to appear to be comparable but not consistent.

Description of the health status of homeless school-age children in the context of the health care needs of all children revealed that homelessness so exacerbates and compounds the problems that a difference of degree becomes a difference of kind. It was found that the impact of the health problems and vulnerabilities of homeless children results in disequilibrium of school nursing practice.

Despite their small numbers within the school population, the impact of the type and severity of school nursing problems that homeless children present provides a basis for deriving implications for program development for school nursing education. If nursing education is to inform school nursing practice, it must address the impact of the health status of homeless children on school nursing.

Program development in school nurse education must center on communication, time, access, and uncertainty if school nurses are to function as effective and efficient practitioners. Program development for school nurse education must account for source, message, audience, and disruption of messages in the multiple contexts of school nurse practice. Program development must account for short- and long-term planning, identification of appropriate health services, and linkage to social agencies, and the creation, maintenance, and accessibility of data banks. Program development must accommodate the school nurse as participant in setting health care policy and forums for collaboration within nursing and between nursing and other health care providers and social-economic agencies and services.

The lives of homeless children are fraught with uncertainty. Program development for school nurse education must account for the unknown in the calculation of effective and efficient school nursing intervention for homeless children.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-09, Section: A, page: 3462.

Thesis (ED.D.)--TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, 1995.

School code: 0225.