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| Monday, May 12, 2008 |
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VOLUNTEER SCHOOL NURSE PROGRAM
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The School Health Program was created in 1974 to appraise, protect and promote the health of students and ensure school children are healthy, in the classroom, and ready to learn. School Nurses provide, on school premises, a health-care professional ready to attend to students’ daily health needs. The presence of a school nurse can eliminate the need to delegate certain health tasks to school staff, and help ensure teachers are free to devote their time to educating students. There are over two million students in Florida’s public schools. During a typical school day in Florida, there are nearly 100,000 visits to school health rooms, and more than 80,000 doses of medications are administered. In addition, schools have more students with chronic health problems that require care and monitoring. According to the Florida Department of Health School Health Services report
for the year 2004-2005, there are 174,834 students in 188 Orange County Public Schools. There are nearly 8,213 visits to health rooms with approximately 1,323 medications administered to students each day and over 236,132 nursing assessments and counseling given in a year. The need and cost for these services increases annually. Volunteer school nurses can supplement the existing services of the school nurses on staff. With the help of volunteer nurses, existing school nurses can focus on preventive services that enable students to stay healthy and get more out of school |
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Are you a health care practitioner also interested in volunteering? |
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In addition to the need for nursing health care practitioners in our public schools, our volunteer nurse program is also open to other health care practitioners dedicated to improving the health of our students. If you are a physician, osteopathic physician, chiropractic physician, podiatric physician, optometrist, pharmacist, dentist or dental hygienist, midwife, speech-language pathologist or audiologist, or physical therapist licensed under the applicable Florida Statute, we encourage you to volunteer your services in our public schools.
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