WIP 125 - School Nurse Perspectives on Care Coordination for Children with Medical Complexity

Poster Number: WIP 125
Publication Number: WIP 125.941

Background: Providing care for children with medical complexity (CMC) is multi-faceted in both the environment and personnel required. Despite previous recommendations that encompassing all key partners in a medical neighborhood is necessary for optimal care of CMC, care often remains fragmented. One setting that is particularly underrepresented in the literature is school health for CMC, and school nurses play a pivotal role in care of CMC in schools. To date, there are no prior studies to our knowledge that capture school nurses’ perspectives on care for CMC in the school setting.

Objective: To assess perspectives of school nurses on challenges, suggestions for improvement, and preparedness to treat children with medical complexity in the school setting.

Design/Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with school nurses across a rural state. Recruitment was performed through existing statewide school nurse listservs and word of mouth. An interview guide was developed with key partner input. Interviews were conducted via Zoom and then transcribed by a professional service. We developed a coding tree a priori and thematic analysis was performed by a trained study team with monitoring of inter-rater reliability.