Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Access Control

Open Access

Degree Program

Doctor of Nursing Practice

Degree Track

Public Health Nurse Leader

Year Degree Awarded

2010

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/1440223

Month Degree Awarded

February

Keywords

bullying, schools, school nursing, violence prevention, signs and symptoms of bullying, bully victim identification

Advisor

M. Christine King

DNP Project Chair

M. Christine King

DNP Project Member Name

Josephine Ryan

Abstract

School nurses see bullies and their victims as visitors to the health office with physical and emotional symptoms. Yet school nurses feel unprepared and unqualified to deal with bullying issues. They are not included as team members in the whole school approach to bullying prevention. METHOD: Eleven school nurses from Greenfield, Northampton and the Union #38 School district participated in The Bully Victim Identification and Intervention Program for School Nurses. Participants completed the Perceptions of Bullying Questionnaire (Hendershot, Dake, Price & Larty, 2006) prior to the training, immediately following the training and 1 month after the training. RESULT: All of the nurses reported an increase in their ability to recognize the signs and symptoms of students who are bullies and victims. The number of methods they felt were effective in reducing bullying increased from 18 methods before the program to 30 after the program. The number of methods they would personally use to deal with bullies and victims increased by 35%. CONCLUSION: School nurses are in a unique position to aid bullies and victims and should be included in the prevention of and solution to this public health problem.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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