School Nursing in Lothian is an exciting and evolving career offering you the opportunity to work in the community school setting with school age children, young people (5-19 years) and their families.
Society is changing and so are the needs of children and young people. The Scottish Government has refocused the role of School Nurses in Scotland to support its goal of making Scotland the best place to grow up.
The School Nursing role relates to the Scottish Government’s Nursing 2023 vision which supports nurses to build working relationships with children and young people who will benefit from specialist support so they can work together to tackle problems at an early stage and prevent future health issues.
So, who are we?
The school nursing service is made up of a skill mix staff who work as a team in mainstream schools, the community setting and offer home visits.
Our team:
Specialist School Nurses/School Nurses, Band 6 – Registered SCPHN-SN, who hold a PgDiploma (master’s level 11).
School Staff Nurses, Band 5 – Registered Nurses
Health Assistants, Band 3.
Where are we based?
School nursing staff are based in Health Centres and travel out to mainstream schools daily. School nurses are allocated a caseload of schools and provide a universal health service for school age children along with the wider school health team. We work in partnership with a range of professionals in health, education, social work, specialist services and other community agencies.
Hours of work:
School Nurses work Monday to Friday, 9-5pm and we offer a variety of posts ranging from part-time to fulltime and term time to all year round working.
What do we do?
We provide a Universal School Nursing Service to all school age children including:
Health Screening and Surveillance.
Transition Health Questionnaires
Health Drop In’s
Health & Wellbeing assessments
Health plans
Health Education (staff & pupils)
Support for children and young people with additional needs
School Nursing Pathway Key Priority Areas
In addition, school nurses focus on children and young people who face additional challenges according to 10 key priorities areas which the Scottish Government has identified:
Emotional Health & Wellbeing
Substance Misuse
Child Protection
Domestic Abuse
Care Experience Children
Homelessness
Sexual Health & Wellbeing
Youth Justice
Young Carers
Transitions
School nurses work alongside health visitors and the wider community health teams to provide a seamless health service for children and young people throughout their school years. Complementary elements of service provision include height & weight screening, health promotion, health and wellbeing interventions. We offer a variety of training opportunities and for those thinking about post-graduate study, we work in partnership with Queen Margaret University.
How to apply: Link to Job Train
For more information contact: See our website at https://services.nhslothian.scot/schoolnursing
