School nurses on the front lines with bullying

A new study reveals that more bullies and bully-victims end up in the nurse’s office. According to the latest edition of Pediatrics, kids involved in bullying (either giving or receiving) see the school nurse for illnesses and non-medical symptoms as well as injuries related to bullying.

Nurses then are on the front lines and may be more aware of the dynamics of bullying than teachers, parents and even other students.

“A lot of times kids may experience some conflict, some bullying, and not involve the teacher or not tell a parent or not tell anybody really,” said Eric Vernberg of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, the study’s lead author. “Particularly for a kid that’s embarrassed about the difficulty they’re having or afraid that saying things about it is going o make it worse in some way.”

To get a ground level view of bullying, Vernberg and his team followed a group of 600 students in grades 3 through 5 at six different schools for a year. They took a survey at the beginning of the year to find out how and how often which kids were getting bullied. They studied the social dynamics of the groups. At the end of the year, they cross referenced the records to the school nurses’ logs and found that the bullies and the bullied were in their offices more than other kids.

Sometimes specific symptoms were identified or it was clear they were there because of a fight related to the harassment. However, there were many non-medically related incidences and complaints of a general nature. It could be that the stress of bullying is causing physical symptoms sending them to the nurse or possibly that they are looking for an objective, non judgment party to confide in or bond with.

Tracking the students who go in and out of the nurses’ offices could be one way to identify what is going on at the school. This could be the opportunity for intervention which could change children’s lives.

Source: Pediatrics, Reuters