The Measles Outbreak: School Nurses’ Population-based Care Super Power

Abstract

Population-based care is an important part of school nursing practice in the 21st century. However, many school nurses may not fully understand what population-based care means. This article outlines what population-based care entails and provides several school nursing examples.

School Nursing for the 21st Century: Assessing Scope of Practice in the Current Workforce

“…Second, the low valuation and engagement in Community/Public Health activities points to a great need to increase the population health focus of current school nursing practice. A population health focus supports the key role of the school nurse in ameliorating inequities (Canales, Drevdahl, & Kneipp, 2019) and is congruent with health care shifts from hospital to community-based health care and from volume to value (Bergren, 2017b;IOM, 2011;Maughan & Davis, 2019;Porter & Kaplan, 2016). The shift will require a national effort of education, research, policy development, advocacy, and mentoring of school nurses to implement Community/Public Health nursing practice (Storfjell et al, 2017).…”

Responding to the Vaccine Confidence Crisis

“…School nurses recognize that family compliance with state immunization mandates protects not only the community within the school but it also protects the larger community from VPD (Maughan & Davis, 2019). School nurses notice trends in symptom presentation, allowing early identification of emerging disease states within the school and work to mitigate the impact of VPD via varying levels of intervention: Schools play a major role in the prevention of VPD (Swallow & Roberts, 2016) and where a school nurse is present immunization exemption rates are lower (Leidner et al, 2019;Salmon et al, 2004).…”

“…During the COVID-19 pandemic, school nurses have demonstrated the community/public health population-based principle of the Framework for 21st Century School Nursing Practice™ (Maughan & Davis, 2019; NASN, 2016); however, addressing vaccine hesitancy requires all our 21st-century skills.…”

Challenged by Immunization Compliance? Five Steps for Nurses in Urban High Schools With Multilingual Students

“…An outbreak of a vaccine-preventable illness compels greater vigilance by health departments and school districts in supporting immunization compliance. Accordingly, the recent emergence of measles outbreaks across the United States, starting in 2018, is compelling schools and school nurses to review and improve their practices (CDC, 2019a; Maughan & Davis, 2019).…”