Scope of Nursing Work and Models of Service Delivery in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools: A Scoping Review.
Anita Moyes, Chelsey Williams, Elizabeth Rankin and 3 others
PMID 41825923WHAT IT FOUND
Nurses in Australian schools handle a wide range of health issues, from mental health referrals to chronic disease support.
However, service models and scope vary significantly by state and employer, creating inequitable access for students depending on where they live.
Key findings
01The most frequent nursing activities reported were support and referral for psychosocial, mental health, and behavioural problems, followed by promotion of care seeking and health literacy.
02Models of service delivery were highly variable, with the most common model being a nurse based in the school with unspecified hours, while explicitly full-time school-based nursing was rare.
03Significant jurisdictional variation exists in the scope of nursing work, with some states contributing minimally to the evidence base for specific health interventions compared to others.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The findings reflect the literature available, which may not represent current-day nursing work if recent practices have not been published. There is a lack of evidence regarding the work of enrolled nurses and nurses employed directly by schools, limiting the ability to analyse these groups robustly. Inconsistent reporting practices across the included sources made it difficult to compare service models and scopes precisely. Secondary schools were overrepresented in the evidence base compared to primary schools, despite primary school students being more numerous.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Funding was provided by Edith Cowan University.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the frequency of reported activities as a measure of their clinical importance or prevalence in every school. The review maps what has been written about, not necessarily what is happening in all schools, and highlights that service delivery is fragmented rather than standardised.