Critical school nurse sensitive measures

Purpose:
School nursing data is not included in national health nor education data sets. The purpose of creating critical indicators in school nursing is to facilitate uniform data collection and measurement of the impact of quality school nursing services on child, family and community outcomes.

Significance:
Identifying school nurse sensitive outcome indicators for local, regional, state and national data sets is the first step in comparing the delivery of individual and population health interventions in the school setting to those delivered in primary care or ambulatory settings.

Strategy and Implementation:
The purpose of this session is to discuss how prospective school nurse sensitive outcomes were identified; provide examples of ongoing work to determine if identified outcomes are school nurse sensitive; and discuss the process of narrowing the outcomes to those that best measure quality school nursing care delivery, facilitate research, and advise health and education policy. The session content will be pertinent to public health nursing and other subspecialties. Four different projects that all relate to identifying school nursing outcomes will be described. Current funding for utilizing a Delphi Process with school nursing leaders will be highlighted. Specific work on selected outcome measures such as Failure to Rescue and child injuries will be discussed. A project aimed at collecting uniform school nursing data across states will be detailed.

Evaluation:
The ultimate success of these endeavors will be a list of school nurse sensitive outcome indicators that will distinguish between the impact of quality school nursing interventions and the influences of family and community on child outcomes.

Implications for Practice:
Just as in acute nursing environments, school nurse sensitive indicators will advise policy and decision makers on recommended school nurse caseloads and will identify child health services that are best delivered in the school setting.