School Nurses On Aisle Four

No wonder schoolkids and teachers are taking so many sick days. You can't be sick at school anymore.

CNN reports the school nurse of the 50s has gone the way of "duck and cover" drills.

. . .while the number of school nurses is decreasing, children with chronic illnesses such as severe food allergies and diabetes are on the rise.
. . . at any given time 70 percent of the students don't have a nurse right at their school, according to the California School Nurses Organization. Some districts have no registered nurses at all, the group says.

As school nurses disappeared out of schools, I vaguely assumed it was some unfortunate, inevitable supply and demand reality.

But surprise! Seems we do have qualified and willing nurses for walk-in clinic duty; they're just private supermarket nurses now instead of public school nurses, and the cost of their professional service is quite affordable, about the price of a haircut.

Gee, this sounds like real progress and convenience for kids like mine, who don't go to school and can grocery shop with me during the day (and can afford haircuts) -- but before I decide this is a good thing, what about everybody else's kids, the 98% in school all day, too many of whom can't access or afford needed health care, much less haircuts?

Publix spokeswoman Maria Brous said the supermarket chain's focus is ``on convenience to our customers. Some work and don't have the flexibility to get to a doctor's office.''

Well then, as long as the workforce is good!

Still, I wish they'd asked me before they abandoned the school nurse model and came up with this.

For one thing, why combine the sick, the healthy and foodstuffs in one place?? I think this must be a first. Think of getting sneeze germs on the produce. I never take a sandwich with me to the bathroom much less the doctor's office, or go to the grocery store when I'm hungry or hurt. Do *you* want to see and smell food when you've got the stomach flu, and those glaring, flickering fluorescent lights will be murder on migraines, not to mention the PA system announcements.

And will it send a profit-dampening mixed message to healthy food shoppers? -- I hate to eat in hospital cafeterias, so I can't see myself eat in a restaurant combining onsite clinic service right there amongst the diners, treating folks with noisy and disgusting disorders and making me wonder if they were fine until after they ate the fish, how unappetizing! We went to an awful lot of trouble changing the culture and the laws of the land to separate smoking from food; why replace smoke with diarrhea, blood, scabs, splints and sinus infections on aisle four?

I'd be inclined to move my food shopping elsewhere.

Maybe it makes more sense to put clinic nurses into barber shops and salons? They already have health code standards and government inspections and a ready client base in and out all day, with no food handling on the premises (but full service salons do have chemical smells and foot fungus issues, yuck, enough to make me sick, never mind.)

Or here's an enterprising public health enhancement. We set up health clinics in those quickie oil change stations, so while the car gets serviced, the driver does too, right in the little waiting area. You're not supposed to touch anything there anyway and the breeze blows through all day, so germs would be less likely to breed and spread. One interchangeable coverall design could serve for doctors, nurses and mechanics. Maybe with a little sticker on your forehead to remind you when to come back for the followup visit! And what a clever business model, ring up twice as much customer cash per "unit" on the same site in the same amount of time.

Of course kids don't drive or own cars or go to restaurants or jobs or shopping, and the kids whose families lack cars and cash won't be helped by anything but school clinics, but hey! They had nothing to lose in the first place, it was never about them and what THEY needed. . .

Bruce Peacock, chief executive of The Little Clinic, said, ``We're
looking to complement the family doctor, not compete with him. . . . All
of the stores are interested in offering the customer the maximum
experience in terms of shopping convenience. Just like some add
dry-cleaning, they can be adding a clinic.''

We're getting one of these fancy food-clinic combos in my state, right in Miami where school corruption is a more popular sport than football and jai alai put together. Miami is the perfect place to play around with anything that disadvantages schoolkids to generate ill-gotten profits for greedy grownups.

Seen today, for example:

Pat Tornillo, the once-powerful head of United Teachers of Dade, now lives in Tallahassee . . .tethered 24 hours to a portable oxygen tank and still wearing his prison ankle bracelet.

"I don't regret the 40 years. I made a good contribution to the education of children," Tornillo said.
The man who played a pivotal role in South Florida education and politics used union dues to pay for a lavish lifestyle -- luxury cruises to Greece and the Caribbean, several homes, clothing and jewelry.
"I really thought that what I was doing was OK," Tornillo said.

I admit I'm still feeling a bit ill-used as an activist school administrator who, over the decades, lost many legislative battles and a lot of money meant to serve children that went instead to Miami and Mr. Tornillo's um, highly personalized "L'État, c'est moi" version of public service and Democratic politics.

But back to the (legal but equally wrongheaded) strategy of separating health care from schoolkids who need it:

Peacock said he was aware of South Florida's reputation for being highly litigious and malpractice premiums being sky-high, but he said he's not worried because most lawsuits involve invasive surgery, not primary care. The Little Clinic is backed with $250 million in funding from Solera Capital, a New York investment fund that believes the concept has huge
potential nationwide.

Huge potential nationwide?
That's what I used to say about public schooling.

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