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Head Lice Stigma

Decent Essays

For past nine years, I am working as a school nurse in a suburban town where people are considered to be of middle and high-income class. Working at the elementary school, I came across a problem that I felt I needed to do something about it. Too many times I witnessed or heard about how children and adults deal with head lice – not head lice infestation, but rather a stigma associated with having lice. The stigma could be potentially more harmful to a child than the head lice itself. After reading this week assignment, I learned that according to Polit & Beck (2014) my study question in PIO format could have been: “What is like for school age children to experience stigma associated with having lice?”
Currently, there is a lot of research …show more content…

Developing a survey as the medium for my research proved to be beneficial. I was able to gain an understanding of the fundamental perceptions that arise when discussing head lice. It is evident from the answers I received from the children and the adults that the stigma associated with lice is so prevalent and overwhelming that it causes concern, fear, and embarrassment for the child who got the lice and the parent. The child and a parent feel like they are second- class citizens and that they are unclean. Utilizing the information that I have gained through a retrospective analysis of the survey responses, I have gathered important facts and was able to developed recommendations for a change. I developed Power Point presentation. My intention for this power point presentation is to bring awareness to and provide a basic knowledge of head lice. More importantly, however, a central purpose of this presentation is to educate parents and their children that the stigma associated with head lice is not necessary. Moreover, I find it is important to unearth the fundamental emotions that children are experiencing pertaining to head lice and ensure that their parents are aware of this potential negative influence in their children’s lives. For that reason, together with other district nurses, we are working collaboratively on changing “No-nit policy” in our

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