Roles of school nurses and factors related to health promoting role performance

Abstract

        School nurses play a significant role in providing health care in school settings. The objectives of this descriptive study were to examine the roles of school nurses in general, health promoting and factors relating to health promoting role of school nurses. The respondents were 55 school nurses under the Ministry of Education and the Health Department, Bangkok Metropolitan Authority. The questionnaires used developed by the researchers under the review of 5 experts consisted of the demographic data, school nurses’ roles and related factors. The reliability test shows its Alpha Coefficient = 0.94. Data analysis included calculating means of school nurses’ roles. Pearson’s correlation and multiple regression were also used to examine the association between nurses’ ages, number of students, training frequency, supervision
frequency, and health promotion role practice.

        It was found that the most significant roles were: health counseling, health service, environmental health and safety, health promotion, collaboration, research, and teaching accordingly. The 3 most mentioned health promoting roles were health education teaching, arranging health exhibitions, and risk behavior monitoring. The ages of school nurses, number of students, number of training, number of supervision were significantly related to health promoting role of school nurses. Factor influening
health promoting role performance the most is the number of supervision. Issued and strategies for improving school nurse competency as well as appropriate job assignment and performance evaluation were recommended.