years of school nurses in Seattle health

School nurses have always had a vital role, making sure students were healthy and ready to learn. And even though their responsibilities have increased as modern medicine has evolved, the heart of the job hasn't changed.

These days, the district's 65 nurses are more likely to field phone calls or e-mails from parents than make house calls. Two of the nurses are men, and all the school nurses have at least a bachelor's degree in the field. Much of their time is spent conducting state-mandated health screenings or developing emergency-care plans for students with life-threatening illnesses.

"Our job is so broad, and what people think we do is so limited," said nurse Marie DeBell, who conducts preschool health assessments and splits the rest of her time between West Woodland Elementary and John Stanford International School.
That may mean finding eyeglasses for a nearsighted child without health insurance, connecting a troubled teen with a counselor or screening children for scoliosis, or hearing and vision problems.