If people think school nursing is all about Band-Aids and record keeping, they haven’t been inside a school recently.

As a retired school nurse, I know first-hand that school nurses have to juggle a complex array of medical and social issues, seeing thousands of students each year. A typical schedule would be health care screenings, hearing and vision testing, chronic illnesses such as diabetes, asthma, student obesity, preventing the spread of disease through blood exposure, special needs such as tube-feeding, and the list goes on and on.

School nurses also must interact with many other professionals, such as teachers, principals, social workers, doctors, school counselors, police officers and others. So their work is seldom only in their offices.

School nurses are healers, comforters, educators, mentors and role models, and are much-needed members of each and every school community.

My hat is off to school nurses everywhere.

Daphne Izer, Lisbon