Many people think of school nurses as the people in a school building responsible for patching up a scraped knee, confirming a fever and checking students for lice.
It’s not that they don’t do those things. It’s that those tasks are only a very small part of what Eva Stone views as a significant role within a school.
Stone, manager of district health at Jefferson County Public Schools, a large district in Louisville, Kentucky, with about 100,000 students, has served as a school nurse for more than two decades, after working in a hospital setting and in public health.
School nurses, she notes, have more access to children — seven or eight hours a day — and their families than really any other health care professional. It’s unique, and it’s also full of opportunity.