Health Services in Boarding School

Abstract

Adolescents who attend high school as preparatory boarding students are growing up and learning to care for themselves in a very different set of circumstances than those who live at home with their families. Although this choice may present myriad opportunities for personal growth and academic advantages, nurturance and support from caring adults is necessary to foster health and well-being. Our model of a collaborative relationship between nursing and counseling in providing health services to the adolescents in our care at St. Mark's School is designed to effectively meet this challenge. While it is true that a very small percentage of adolescents attend preparatory boarding schools in the United States, this article is an attempt to present our working model for consideration by other school nurses and counselors in our field of practice, especially since there is a lack of professionally relevant current literature for reference.

Health-risk behavior differences between boarding and non-resident students: Brazilian adolescent National School Health Survey

“…Overall, higher rates of sexual intercourse, higher prevalence of smoking, and alcohol and drug consumption were reported as more prevalent among boarding students as compared to non-residents. It is possible that the greater independence and freedom experienced at this age is potentially problematic [13,39]. These data suggest that boarding students warrant greater emphasis on health risk screening and preventive counseling.…”

“…The implication of the study findings is clear that the significant associations between boarding students and risky health behaviors should be considered in policies and guidelines. In this sense, more structured and healthy environments may be necessary for students who live at this kind of residence [13]. These students need more attention, advice, and health-promotion activities to lead them to responsibility and a conscientious use of their freedom.…”

“…Healthrisk conditions may be increased by inequalities, which are intensified in socioeconomically weak environments [2,[9][10][11]. Related to this, students' living conditions (i.e., school residency environments) can also influence risky health behaviors [12][13][14][15][16].…”

“…Health studies with students residing in educational institutions (EI) are scarce [12,13,17,18]. Initial evidence suggests increased alcohol consumption, tobacco and marijuana use, risky sexual behaviors, sedentarism, and poor eating habits among students in residential housing [16,[19][20][21].…”

Student Management at Saint Aloysius School Dormitory

“…On the other hand, meals and health care are provided. Howewer, the quality of these services is not as good as the nutrition and health services at some schools in Shaanxi (Yue et al's, 2008) and other schools as reported by Pucher et al (2013) and Pavletic et al (2016). Further, the safety is doubting despite the use of CCTV and the presence of permanent caretakers at the dormitory area.…”