To promote health in adolescents, some strategies historically used by school nurses have included messaging through posters, displays, and newsletters, which are perceived by some adolescents as outdated and ineffective. Most Canadian adolescents use a cell phone, and more and more health services offer options for adolescent education through text message. Health information communicated through Alberta Health Services social media platforms in the past have rarely targeted adolescents. The gap between longstanding resource delivery methods and a reported lack of client uptake, and few studies examining the feasibility of using a text messaging service with adolescents inspired our front-line research study on just that. Would an innovative school nurse-initiated text messaging intervention delivered to the hands of adolescents be seen as an acceptable health promotion strategy? Would this be a feasible health promotion strategy for school nurses? Come and learn about this community health school nursing mixed methods research study.
Informed by Canadian Community Health Nursing Standards of Practice, this presentation will highlight the benefits of using this research as evidence based practice to inform health promotion in school nursing clinical practice. Participants can expect to look more closely at this innovative multimedia text-messaging intervention developed by school nurses with input from adolescents, how resources were linked to the texts and their access measured, and hear findings and practical recommendations for their utility to reach the masses as an adjunct to the face-to-face engagement between community health nurses and their school communities.
In recent years, there has been growing awareness and interest in concussion outside the world of sport and recreation. A concussion can happen to anyone at any time. When managed appropriately, most concussions resolve without complications. On some occasions, this injury can be serious and result in long-term disabilities.
The Concussion Awareness Training Tool (CATT) is a series of online educational modules and resources with the goal of standardizing concussion recognition, diagnosis, treatment, and management (www.cattonline.com). CATT is tailored to specific audiences, including school professionals, medical professionals, coaches, players/participants, parents and caregivers, and workers and workplaces. CATT provides educator resources for supporting a student’s return to school following concussion. The Canadian Paediatric Society recommends that anyone working with children be educated on the signs and symptoms of concussion and appropriate management.
This presentation will describe the collaboration between CATT and the Richmond School District in British Columbia, and the lessons learned regarding the role that community health nurses can play in facilitating community-level changes to policy. Partnerships between community/public health nurses and school districts not only strengthens capacity within schools to develop strong concussion policies, but also increases staff members’ individual concussion knowledge and awareness, allowing them to better support students in their recovery from this invisible injury. Raising the importance of concussion awareness as a public health issue is ideally suited for collaboration.
Learning Objectives: Participants will increase their understanding and knowledge of concussion and learn how to strengthen community capacity through inter-sectoral collaboration.