School nurse in the restrain of pandemics and the re-opening school. An integrative review

Abstract

School nurse is present today in many countries around the world. Its contribution within schools is described in the literature especially with regard to the management of chronic diseases and health education interventions. The Sars-CoV2 pandemic has forced many states to close schools, involving major psycho-social problems. The reopening of schools is a great challenge, in this regard this work has the goal of evaluating the literature that identifies the figure of the school nurse as a strength in containing the spread of contagious diseases and the actions that can be effective for this purpose. An integrative literature review was conducted by interrogating the main international medical-nursing databases, all research articles were included, editorials and letters were excluded. Results were screened independently by two investigators. 10 articles were included, the main purpose of which was to describe outbreak cases and strategies for their management. The major nursing interventions highlighted are surveillance, case reporting, education, management of relationships with families, collaboration with other professionals. Although the identified literature was quantitatively poor, it is clear that the school nurse is central to syndromic surveillance, educational role, decision making, clinical management, collaboration with the team of experts and management of communication.