A health-care system called eSchoolCare was created to support school nurses with the lead of Lori Anderson, a faculty member at the UW-Madison School of Nursing and the American Family Children’s Hospital.

It is an innovative technology-enhanced project that extends the talent, knowledge, and resources to the school nurses, children with chronic conditions and their families.

The goal of eSchoolCare is to improve health and educational outcomes for children with chronic conditions across the country as well as to help nurses.

In an educational system from elementary to high school, the first source of health care is through a school nurse as her role is critical for the health care quality provided to students.

Although school nurses are trained to meet the demands of modern medicine, their training for providing children with chronic conditions is limited.

However, eSchoolCare program provides expertise on chronic illnesses from trustworthy and authoritative sources on a portable screen such as a laptop or tablet. The ongoing and updated expertise provided on the modules comes from members of the School of Nursing and the American Family Children’s Hospital.

The ability to own health system lies in a school nurse of a school or a school district. However, it’s considered to be an isolated and forgotten health profession in some ways.

According to Anderson, eSchoolCare’s major goal is to talk and raise awareness of school nurses. Anderson said, “I was in the school district all by myself and it’s an independent practice, but it is also sort of isolated, so if you go work at a hospital, you have all sorts of colleagues who are nurses and you can run questions by them”.

eSchoolCare is currently in approximately 30 Wisconsin counties and the whole state of West Virginia. Anderson and her team hopes to expand their system and allow school nurses the opportunity to grow.