A short history of the early school health service in Western Australia 1906–1912

Background: Irrespective of the provision of an integrated school health policy, the school health nurses continue to experience multiple challenges regarding the provisioning of school health service delivery.Aim: The aim of this paper was to explore and describe the experiences of school health nurses regarding school health service delivery in the Tshwane district.Setting: Schools in the Tshwane district in Pretoria were used in the study.Methods: A qualitative and descriptive phenomenological design was used to conduct the study. Purposive sampling techniques were used to select a sample from the population of school health nurses employed in the Tshwane district and conduct the enquiry because of their knowledge and experience of school health services. The researchers collected data by means of unstructured, one-on-one in-depth interviews. The Tesch data analysis method was used by the researcher and co-coder. The researcher identified categories, subcategories and themes and these were reduced into grouping topics that were related to one another.Results: Positive and negative experiences of school health nurses emerged. It was evident from the findings of the study that the factors affecting the quality of the integrated school health programme (ISHP) provided were interrelated. Most of these factors negatively affected service delivery.Conclusion: It was recommended that the partnership between the National Department of Health and National Department of Basic Education as the main role players should be sustained at all times to ensure the successful implementation of the ISHP.

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The American school health service looks ahead

Public Health ◽

10.1016/s0033-3506(52)80110-6 ◽

1952 ◽

Vol 66 ◽

pp. 85

Keyword(s):

Health Service ◽

School Health ◽

American School ◽

School Health Service

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PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.5.2.362 ◽

1950 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 362-367

Author(s):

GEORGE M. WHEATLEY

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Health Education ◽

Health Service ◽

School Health ◽

Communicable Disease ◽

Marked Change ◽

First Grade ◽

Health Examination ◽

School Health Service ◽

Antibiotic Drugs

THERE has been a marked change in our concept of the term "school health service." Early activities in this field were almost wholly devoted to the control of communicable disease. Today, thanks to immunization, the antibiotic drugs and health education, most of the old enemies of child health have been conquered. As a result, the years that a child spends in school have been made the healthiest period of life, when appraised by the crude measure of mortality. Why then school health service? Let me first define what I mean by this term. It comprises health supervision of the school child by educators, public health nurses and school physicians for case-finding and health guidance. At no other time of life is the child or family so readily available for preventive medical service and health education. Public health cannot afford to neglect this ready access to so large a segment of the population—actually more than 20 million persons. Entrance to kindergarten and first grade is perhaps the most valuable of these opportunities. For all too many children, this is the first health examination since the first year of life. Habit disorders or physical defects which have developed in the preschool years can be brought to light and treatment advised. A convincing demonstration of the value of a good medical examination at this time of life occurred recently when I was instructing a group of fourth year medical students. As part of their pediatric training, they visited a school to do some examinations under supervision.

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