Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Last week, we discussed a new study of injuries in
physical education classes in American schools. The
number of students taken to hospitals increased one
and a half times from nineteen ninety-seven to two
thousand seven. Few injuries were serious. Then why
treat them at emergency rooms? One possible reason:
a shortage of school nurses.
Amy Garcia agrees with that. She is the executive
director of the National Association of School
Nurses. She says federal guidelines call for one
nurse for every seven hundred fifty healthy
students. In reality, she says, the number is more
like one for every one thousand one hundred
students.
Every state is different. The association says
Vermont has one nurse for every two hundred
seventy-five students. In Utah, which has a bigger
population, each nurse is responsible for almost
five thousand students.
The recession may have reduced a national nursing
shortage; health care is one industry that has kept
hiring. But experts predict that the shortage will
grow again. Another problem for schools is limited
budgets. Nurses often have to split their time at
different schools.
And not all schools employ registered nurses. An
R.N. must have at least a two-year nursing degree.
The Labor Department says registered nurses earned
an average of sixty-five thousand dollars
last year.
Amy Garcia says school nurses earn an average of
forty-two thousand dollars. But some earn half that
and are on the same pay system as people who clean
schools.
Pat Lewis is a school nurse in Beaumont, Texas. She
and one assistant care for about nine hundred
children ages four to eleven. She says many times
the school nurse is the first one to bring health
problems to the attention of parents.
One concern for schools is the H1N1 virus, often
called swine flu. In August, federal officials
announced guidelines for schools. These urge local
officials to balance the risk of flu in their
communities with the problems that school dismissals
could cause.
The hope is to keep schools open. But if any schools
do have to close, then the hope is to keep children
learning -- for example, through phone calls or over
the Internet. Schools could also be used as places
to give flu vaccinations. Federal health officials
said they expect a vaccine for the H1N1 flu to be
available by the middle of October.
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
