Northwestern Utilizes Robot School Nurse
By Jensyn Siebrecht
While most small schools cannot afford the luxury of a full-time school nurse, Northwestern School has fast-forwarded into the 21st century with a robot nurse.
With an iPad in the office with 12 nurses ready to take the call, students who fall ill during the school day can get a diagnosis from a real nurse.
The robot nurse has many attachments coming with it, so the nurse can look into one’s ear, look down one’s throat, take one’s temperature, and measure one’s heart rate. These nurses can also look for lice and rashes over the camera. In the end, the school does not have to worry about the parents’ consent if their child is sick. The nurse who takes the call will contact the parents for the school.
“I think it’s nice that we can just streamline the whole medical process, with students coming to the office when they don’t feel good or needing authorized medication. We can put that all through the well-care nurse, and they can provide services instead of us having to guess what is needed. Since we’re not medical professionals, it’s really hard to be able to provide those kinds of services,” Administrative Assistant Jessica Halvorson had said.
Halvorson also said with the new robot nurse it will be harder, especially for the older students, to fake sickness and go home all just because they do not want to be at school.
“I think it’s going to help, especially with older kids who just tend to want to leave, saying they’re sick. We can now make sure each student sees the nurse, gets a temp taken, let’s them know how they’re not feeling good, so they can then contact the parents and let them know that they’re sick, and the parent can authorize them to go home,” Halvorson said.