School Nurses' Experiences Working With Unaccompanied Refugee Children and Adolescents: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

School nurses are one of the first health-care professionals to meet unaccompanied refugee children and adolescents and therefore have an important impact on health outcomes. The aim of this study was to describe school nurses' experiences working with unaccompanied refugee children and adolescents. Semistructured interviews were conducted with school nurses (n ¼ 14) who worked with unaccompanied refugee children and adolescents. The interviews were analyzed via qualitative content analysis. The results fell into three themes: (a) knowledge of trauma-informed care, (b) knowledge of intercultural nursing, and (c) importance of self-awareness. School nurses require the development of tailor-made skills that focus on crisis, trauma, and cultural awareness to meet the complex needs associated with working with unaccompanied refugee children and adolescents.

Report From a RAN Meeting in Zagreb, Croatia, With the Purpose to Prevent Radicalization Among Refugee Children

“…Two master students from Sweden, Ermira Musliu and Snezana Vasic, did their master thesis in 2018 on the experiences of school nurses in meeting unaccompanied children and young people during their education at the University of Kristianstad. The study, with Eva K. Clausson and Pernilla Garmy as coauthors, was published (Musliu, Vasic, Clausson, & Garmy, 2019) and was brought to the attention of a network within the European Union, the Radicalization Awareness Network, which works to prevent radicalization of young people.…”

“…The importance of deepening knowledge in trauma sensitive training was emphasized. In one of the lectures, we presented the results of the Musliu study (Musliu et al, 2019), which can be summarized as that school nurses need tailormade tools with a focus on crisis, trauma, and deepened cultural competence in the work to meet the complex needs of unaccompanied refugee children. Thereafter, we presented the Health School with the overall aim of increasing knowledge about refugee children's personal well-being and how it can improve traumarelated stress of refugee children (Demmer Selstam & Arvidsson, 2017).…”

Supporting Students with Neurodevelopment Disorders in School Health Care—School Nurses’ Experiences

“…Supporting students with special needs, such as children with mental health problems [ 12 ] or refugees [ 13 ] has been found to be both meaningful and challenging for school nurses, although there seems to be potential for improving the work through professional development with mentorship and enhancement of new knowledge. Our hope is that this study will help to guide early career school health professionals to access tools and suggestions regarding how to support students with NDDs.…”

Making Your School Nurse Philosophy Visible

“…Addressing the physical, mental, emotional, and social health needs of students is pivotal for school nurses ( National Association of School Nurses, 2016 ). School nurses experience their profession as highly meaningful but challenging and require professional and personal development ( Jönsson, Maltestam, Bengtsson-Tops, & Garmy, 2019 ) and self-awareness ( Musliu, Vasic, Clausson, & Garmy, 2019 ). Philosophy could be a guide when encountering difficult school nursing dilemmas.…”