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. 2024 Oct;40(5):523-535.
doi: 10.1177/10598405241248429. Epub 2024 May 5.

Reported Impact of COVID-19 Workload and Stressors on School Nurses' Provision of Care During the 2021-2022 School Year: A Secondary Analysis of U.S. School Nurse Survey Data

Sarah L Merkle  1   2 , Justin Ingels  2 , Daniel Jung  2 , Michael Welton  3 , Andrea Tanner  4 , Sharunda Buchanan  1 , Sarah Lee  5
Affiliations

Reported Impact of COVID-19 Workload and Stressors on School Nurses' Provision of Care During the 2021-2022 School Year: A Secondary Analysis of U.S. School Nurse Survey Data

Sarah L Merkle et al. J Sch Nurs. 2024 Oct.

Abstract

Many school nurses experienced increased work burden and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. This analysis examined data from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cross-sectional, nationwide survey of school nurses in March 2022 to examine associations between school nurses' ability to conduct their core responsibilities and selected nurse and school factors among school nurses during the 2021-2022 school year and COVID-19 pandemic. Perceived adequate staffing and financial compensation reduced the odds of reported difficulties across all core school nursing tasks. Nurses without a registered nurse license and with higher caseloads were more likely to report difficulty in implementing specific tasks. The impact of these factors varied, with inadequate financial compensation having the largest association with school nurses' difficulty implementing all the core responsibilities. The study results improve our understanding of school nurses' challenges in implementing core school nursing responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2021-2022 school year.

Keywords: COVID-19; emergency response; policies/procedures; school health; school nursing.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Conceptual Model of Research Questions Note. Shaded boxes are concepts that are not included in the multivariable data analyses.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
CDC School Nurse Survey Respondent Eligibility for Study
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
School Nurses’ Reported Difficulty Implementing Core School Nursing Activities Due to COVID-19 During the 2021–2022 School Year Note. N = 6,995 school nurse respondents with >1 year of experience.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Final Dependent Variables Based on Factor Analyses, Heat Maps, and Qualitative Analyses
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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