The Implementation of Health-Related Procedures in Classrooms for Students with Severe Multiple Impairments

Abstract

One-hundred fifty teachers of students with severe and multiple impairments were surveyed to identify the prevalence of health-related procedures being used in the classrooms, the person(s) routinely responsible for implementing the procedure(s), and the persons the teachers felt should be responsible for implementing the procedures. In addition, the survey identified the source of the teacher's information concerning health-related procedures for individual students, types of correspondence with the school nurse and the family physician, the teachers' awareness of the availability of school policy for implementing health-related procedures, the teachers' source of training on health-related procedures, and the relationship of the classroom location to visits by the school nurse. Seventy percent of the questionnaires were returned. Teachers indicated that all but one of the procedures listed were occurring in one or more of the classrooms. The teachers ndicated that, for the most part, they were primarily responsible for implementing the procedures on a routine basis. The teachers' responses indicated that they felt they should be responsible for a specific group of procedures with the nurse and paraprofessional, or nurse and teacher in combination responsible for a different set of procedures. The family was used most often as a source of information for the health-related procedures. Contact with the school nurse was variable. Classrooms in integrated or rural settings were reported as visited less often by the school nurse than classrooms in either more segregated or urban settings. Only 21% of all the classroom teachers responding were aware of local district guidelines for the determination of who should be responsible for the implementation of health-related procedures.