Educational and Community-Based Program
Top Five Needs of the School
The foremost priority for the school is to increase the number of nurses to serve the school community. The nurse, working on part-time to serve a population of 800 students, ages 5–12 is not adequate. The students need more contact with the nurse, which means that the nurse should be available and have more support. Hence, this can be done by adding one or two nurses. Another priority at the school is addressing the feeding arrangements for the students. Feeding in the classroom and food brought from home does not promote healthy feeding for the children. A cafeteria should be set up from where food is prepared where the students are able to feed in an organized manner. Health-related programs, such as physical education and health classes are required on a regular basis (Pbert et al., 2013). There should be use of specialized teachers to provide physical education and health classes. Allocation of adequate time for the same is critical. There is a general need to implement an educational and community-based program to support the achievement of health-related objectives at the school.
The Roles of the Nurse
The most important role for the nurse in the school is advocacy. The nurse is the one to advocate for the necessary changes, most importantly in seeking support for the implementation of the necessary programs to achieve the health-related objectives. The nurse will play the role by coming up with a list of recommendations to be presented to the school administration. Using the role as an effective communicator, the nurse will seek to convince the administration about the importance of the necessary changes (Holmes et al., 2016). As a change leader, the nurse will play the role of leading the necessary change in the school to create a healthy environment for the faculty, staff, and students. The nurse will initiate the change process and work with the administration to the final stages after implementation.
Specific Recommendations
Educational and community-based program established on the identified priorities is critical for the school. The program will be all inclusive such that it covers all the areas that require change at the school. The program will include employment of one or more nurses to cater for the health needs of the 800 students. It will also include the construction of a cafeteria and employment of more staff to cater for the feeding needs of the students. Physical education and health classes will be implemented more regularly and teachers to provide the services be deployed. The recommendations include collaborative efforts between the school, community, and families to ensure that the program is implemented (Smith & Sobel, 2014). Indeed, this is because the proposed program is resource intensive.
Evaluation of the Program
Evaluation of the program will include the collection of data to establish whether the objectives of the program have been achieved (Holmes et al., 2016). The initial step is to evaluate whether the program will be implemented within the timeline and if the objectives are laid out. Three months into the program, another evaluation will be carried out to establish the level of achievement of the objectives, including hiring of more nurses, implementation of physical education and health classes and recruiting teachers for the same and establishment of a cafeteria for provision of healthy diet to the students. Based on the outcome of the evaluation, important decisions will be made, such as to continue the program as it is, change some aspects of the program, or overhaul the whole program.
