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Special school nurses

Who are we?

  • We are all either Children’s Nurses, Learning Disability Nurses or Mental Health Nurses with a current Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) registration.
  • We are employed by  Buckinghamshire NHS Trust and are based in some of the special schools in Buckinghamshire.
  • We provide a high quality evidence based School Nursing Service.
  • We work in partnership with the teaching staff and the Multidisciplinary team to ensure children reach their full potential.
  • The role of the Special School Nurse is to support the on-going individual healthcare needs of the children in the school.
  • We will ensure that healthcare plans are in place when required and that teaching staff are trained to meet the children’s specific health needs.

What the service provides

  • as Nurses we will assess, plan, implement and evaluate the individual health care needs of children.
  • we provide families with information and advice about other services and resources.
  • we see students in the class room or in clinic when the Community Paediatricians or Psychiatrists come to visit school.
  • we attend multi disciplinary meetings to support the continuity of care for each student.
  • we provide training and monitoring of competencies for teaching staff  including safe administration of medication, emergency seizure management, enteral feeding, suction, Anaphylaxis, Asthma etc.
  • we liaise and are involved with the schools immunisations team so that children can receive their routine immunisations in school.
  • we report concerns about children’s safeguarding issues, and attend safeguarding meetings ensuring good child welfare.
  • we can refer children to other services as required.

Medication

Special School nurses work in accordance with ‘Managing Medicines in Schools and Early Years’.
Teaching staff are able to administer medication prescribed by the child’s GP providing it:

  • is in the original packaging
  • has an in date pharmacy label on it a signed consent form is completed by the parent /carer.

Special School Nurses and teaching staff depend on regular health updates from parents to ensure that we are all acting in the child’s best interest.

Medicines should only be administered at school when it would be either detrimental to a child’s health or  would affect their school attendance if they didn’t have it.

The school is responsible for setting out the circumstances in which non-prescription medicines may be administered in school.

Medicines and devices such as asthma inhalers, blood glucose testing meters and adrenaline pens are readily accessible in school to children and not locked away.

Children’s health

Generally children should be in school when they are well, although we understand how complex children’s health needs can be, we advise parents that children should not be sent  to school if they:

  • have a temperature unusual to them
  • have had an episode of vomiting and or diarrhoea (they should remain at home for 48 hours after last episode)
  • have had a generalised seizure in the morning

If children become ill at school we will contact parents to advise on the best plan of action, as we are not able to diagnose illness/conditions.

We take our statutory guidance from the Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions guidance document December 2015

Data protection

We keep up to date electronic records on all the children we see. We adhere to nursing standards locally and nationally.  Families are able to access these records under the rules of the Data Protection Act 2018.

 

Contact Details:

Booker Park School – Tel: 01296 427221

Chiltern Wood Schools – Tel: 01494 525728

MacIntyre School – Tel: 01296 681274

Stocklake Park School – Tel: 01296 423507

The Pace Centre – Tel: 01296 392739