Stronger together

By 11 a.m. on a random Thursday last month, a school nurse in an elementary school had already seen 25 students, spending less than eight minutes with each.

At a high school in Red Clay, a school nurse observed 62 visits in the first four hours of the day, in addition to the 68 scheduled medications dispensed daily.

School nurses say that's the norm in schools with high behavioral, social and emotional needs, a pattern symptomatic of a rising mental health crisis in Delaware schools.

"Pre-COVID, it did not look like this," said Mandy Pennington, supervisor of health services for the Red Clay Consolidated School District.

Pennington said they're seeing anxiety manifest itself as physical symptoms. For example, every Monday, after a long weekend, a kindergartner winds up in the nurse's office, complaining of a headache.

"Our littlest patients can't communicate that they're feeling anxious, so we, as school nurses, have to investigate," said Pennington. "We first assess their vision and whether they've fallen recently. Then, we look at patterns and realize that a headache was a pathway to get this child back to grandma's house, where she feels more comfortable than being in school."

These concerns brought hundreds of nurses together for the third annual School Nurse Professional Development Day, held on UD's STAR Campus on October 10, where they could collaborate, share solutions, and explore strategies to support student health. The partnership between UD's College of Health Sciences (CHS) and school nurses aims to address pediatric health inequities.