To stay ahead of what some are calling "a perfect storm," NYSUT's Polling Center staff is reaching out this week to 3,000 school nurses to survey working conditions in their districts.

The coming storm has many fronts:

• An increasing demand on school nurses to deal with a growing population of special-needs students;
• Lack of a school nurse in every building;
• A shortage of people entering the nursing profession;
• Growing salary disparity within the profession;
• Increased reporting demands to the State Education Department, often without assistance;
• Scope-of-practice challenges; and
• Lack of standardized protocol.

"Not only are school nurses being asked to perform more nursing-related duties, they're also being asked to maintain more data and student records," said NYSUT Vice President Kathleen Donahue, whose office oversees health care issues.

"Some districts have recognized this and provide secretarial aid to nurses," she said. "Others have yet to even install a computer nurses can access."

The tools of the trade for school nurses have become insulin pumps, EpiPens and inhalers - for diabetes, allergies and asthma - along with feeding tubes and catheters.

This comes in addition to standard nursing health care duties, dealing with injuries, and now, tracking body mass index and dental exams for state records.

Polling Center staff will ask nurses about protocol and procedure in their districts, staffing, working conditions, nurse-student ratios, new state mandates, scope of practice and salary.

NYSUT will use data from the survey to advocate for better working conditions.

Improvements will be sought through action at the union's annual Representative Assembly or through legislative initiatives such as NYSUT's advocacy for a school nurse in every building.

"We want to ensure the safety of our nurses, and attract new nurses into the profession," Donahue said.

To that end, NYSUT has joined with two other statewide groups representing school nurses to compile the survey and follow through on its results.

The New York State Association of School Nurses is represented in this joint effort by school nurse Diane Lightfoote of the Glens Falls Teachers Association.

Sally Schoessler is executive director of the New York Statewide School Health Services Center. The center contracts with State Ed to provide a variety of services for school nurses, including training programs, emergency care kits and other materials.

Joining Lightfoote and Schoessler are NYSUT member-nurses Ann O'Hara, Syracuse Teachers Association; Dona Frazee, Visiting Nurse Association of Albany; Barbara Hammond, New Hartford TA; Loretta Crotty, Greenville Faculty Association; and Anne Goldman, special nursing representative to the United Federation of Teachers and chair of the NYSUT Health Care Professionals Council.

"There's a complexity of health needs coming to our doorstep," Crotty said.