Collaborative Efforts to Improve Student Focused Care

The Missouri Association of School Nurse’s (MASN) has embraced the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) Framework for 21st Century School Nursing PracticeTM.  The five non-hierarchical key principles of the NASN Framework (surrounding the student) include: Standards of Practice, Care Coordination, Leadership, Quality Improvement, and Public Health. 

MASN and our MO. State School Nurse Consultants at the Missouri Department of Health collaborate to provide an annual Health Office Orientation for new employees who would be working in a school health office. The participants included RN, LPNs, and health extenders/aides. The event includes lectures and a hands-on lab. Speakers included a representative from the Missouri Board of Nursing and the MO DHSS Bureau of Immunizations among other state agencies. 

MASN also supports the ASCD and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Model (WSCC) and regularly provides pre-conference training at the Missouri Coordinated School Health Conference each December. Some of the topics which have been offered… Vision and hearing screening, writing Individualized Healthcare Plans (IHP’s), asthma care, advocacy, and school nurse resources.

For the past eight years, MASN has partnered with the Brain Injury Association of Missouri to bring Concussion Education to school nurses, coaches, athletic directors, school administrators through the BIA-MO Sports Concussions: Facts, Fallacies and New Frontiers Education series. A school nurse team serves on the conference planning committee and often serves as expert panelists. 

HB 1568 required education, a model policy, protocols, and distribution. MASN partnered with Aetna, the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NCADA), the Missouri Department of Mental Health (MODMH), the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (MODHS) Director, the MODHSS School Health Program and a grant from the CDC to put together a Missouri specific education toolkit utilizing NASN’s Naloxone in School Toolkit and Operation Prevention’s Parent Toolkit. 

MASN has liaisons/representatives to the following: MO Advisory on Childhood Immunization, MO Coordinated School Health Coalition, MO Department of Health and Senior Services, MO Injury and Violence Prevention Advisory Committee, MO National Education Association, MO Opioid Abuse Prevention, MO Oral Health Coalition, Human Trafficking Collaborative Network, and the National Board for Certification of School Nurses.