Ector County Independent School Meeting Paper Example

I attended a board meeting at the Ector county independent school, which was held at the board room 319, starting from 0600 hrs on 13th, November 2018. In attendance were the school superintendent and a special guest who was invited to talk about health issues. Mrs. Smith, who is a senior nurse at the local hospital had been invited to share with the board her views on the health issues and how they are critical in policy formulation as well as decision making. I arrived at the meeting 20 minutes earlier. At the main entrance of the boardroom, there was a desk on it were some meeting's agenda, copies and other essential documents where individuals picked as they entered the meeting room. I was very excited to have the chance to be at such a meeting where matters affecting students were being addressed. Having come a bit earlier, I hadan opportunity to count a total of twenty individuals coming into the meeting before it started.

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As the meeting commenced, members of the board present mentioned their names one after the other. As soon as this was done, the superintendent of the school welcomed guest of honor and all those who made it to the meeting. The superintendent also did some few report reading where he tabled reports of the previous month's events including few budgets of coming events. In addition, the superintendent asked the board to approve the budget to fund the project, which was to be conducted the following month. The members of the board requested for some time to go through the document before considering making their decisions.

As the meeting progressed, everybody became more attentive when it was time to welcome Mrs. Smith, to make her special presentation. However, it had been long since such a guest was invited as matters of health always were ignored when it comes to meetings of such caliber. In fact, a lot needed to be done since this was the first meeting that addressed the issues of health. Health services have been miserable over time, and I thought that having a medical practitioner in the policy-making would be crucial. As she stood up, it was clear that everyone in the meeting wanted to listen to the unique insights from her. The presentation began with a high note, and everyone was quiet, glued to his or her seat ready to take note of the marvelous speech that was narrated by Mrs. Smith.

Indeed the presentation was unique as various perspectives on how to approach health were discussed. First, it was discussed that health starts with preventive measures. When students were safe and free from any harm and free from pre-exposing factors, the society would be as healthy. Therefore, there should be efforts for the school to improve on its approaches of fighting germs and addresses matters concerning public health. It was agreed that bacteria and virus caused most of the problems relating to health. Thus, by ensuring that all our members in the school and the community at large are free from this virus and bacteria, the number of people falling ill will significantly be reduced (Prince et al., 2016). Also, it means that the institution policymakers should come up with policies whose aims are to reduce exposure to bacteria and virus among students. Institutions can achieve this by improving hygiene in the compound and providing clean water and soap to taps around the compound. If such policies were to be implemented fully, the progress would be inevitable. Also, personal hygiene should be emphasized among all students because it is the responsibility of each of them to be clean (Shneiderman, Plaisant & Hesse, 2013).

Additionally, health service delivery can be improved by ensuring proper and supply of high-quality medical commodities are availed to the school medical facility. As a point of fact, health care is all about providing excellent and quality medical checkup and medication to the students.Also, if the supplies in the school hospital are inadequate, even if it employs highly qualified nurses, but lacks adequate and necessary equipment, they will not perform as expected. In line with this, the policy makers were urged to make sure that the budget for purchasing medical commodities is adequate to buy all the necessary equipment which is needed for service delivery. Also, the board members were urged to ensure that they avail enough monetary resources to purchase essential medical supplies. However, before this happens, it was suggested that a survey should be conducted to understand the position of the school's hospital and if there are improvements to be made, how they should be made and at what time. By doing so, the board will be able to understand the expected budget that is enough to cater for the purchase of specific health care resources and to ensure proper management of the school hospital.

Precisely, the better service delivery in the hospital should be characterized by a good relationship between patients and medical workers. For the relationship to be perfect, there should be confidentiality and integrity among the parties (Fan, 2015). One of the ways for maintaining healthy relationships is through the enhanced privacy of record keeping. In this case, the patients seek medical advice to the school nurses bearing in mind that whatever problem they are going through will be kept secret. For example, in a school, there may be outside seeking medical attention and may be suffering from sexually transmitted infections, and they do not want other people to know about such cases. Therefore the nurses must provide medical care to the patient and ensure the information is withheld at whatever cost. In other words, this is an essential practice as in a school setting where most of the patients are young. In other words, the student also requires confidentiality at personal levels (Fan, 2015). In case confidentiality is betrayed, he or she will never come back for medication again.

The board members were advised to come up with a committee which will be handling cases where nurses contravene this policy of confidentiality. Moreover, where nurses are found guilty, they should be transferred to another place. By doing so, the student will restore the lost confidence to the nurses. Hence, the interaction between the two parties will be maximized for a better society.

Regular screening and frequent checkups were also discussed in depth. The board members were advised to come up with policies which would help the medical department conduct routine testing for students, as well as checkups that are, meant for not only for the collection of date but also early detection of various diseases. As an institution, frequent medical checkups will help in the collection of data about the most common health conditions affecting the majority of students. Through such efforts, the school will determine the reason as to why the conditions are common the ways of preventing it from re-occurring. Furthermore, this will also help in planning because the institution will be able to understand the need for different medication. Thus, the medicine whose demand is high will be given much resource allocation.

Additionally, regular checkups are essential because they will help the medical department to detect some of the hidden diseases, at an early stage to avoid more damage to the patient. According to to Mrs. Smith, diseases such as diabetes and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), are easily treated if detected earlier. Also, early detection enhances effective management and treatment compared to when exposed at a later stage. Therefore, this means that the administration should come up with such policies and encourage students always to visit the hospital for regular checkups (Eduardo, 2017).

Finally, the administration and board members were advised to work hand in hand with the community and the local governments. The operation between the institution and other local entities is significant. In other words, the institution does not exist in a vacuum. Where it exists there are many other local government agencies which are ready to help in providing better cost-effective medical services. Thus, the cost issues will be well catered for if the institution is prepared to work with the government. Also, both the federal and state governments should provide a hand in delivering medical supplies to the institution. By so doing, the institution will be able to save some of the little resources they have for other important projects.

Conclusion

As the meeting came to an end, I was pleased to have been part of such an educative session. The chairperson gave the vote of thanks and the closing remarks. Therefore, it was clear that the board was much concerned with better service delivery contrary to what many thought. As the meeting adjourned, one could tell that indeed all that has been discussed in the meeting was for the good of the school regarding better medical services. I walked out of the room very delighted and pleased to be given a chance of attending it. In a nutshell, the meeting was eye-opening and educative.

References

Eduardo.O. (2017). "Home Health Care: Shouldn't It Be Work Worth Doing?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-11-29

Fan, M. D. (2015). Private data, public safety: A bounded access model of disclosure. NCL Rev., 94, 161.

Prince, M., Comas-Herrera, A., Knapp, M., Guerchet, M., & Karagiannidou, M. (2016). World Alzheimer report 2016: improving healthcare for people living with dementia: coverage, quality and costs now and in the future.

Shneiderman, B., Plaisant, C., & Hesse, B. W. (2013). Improving healthcare with interactive visualization. Computer, 46(5), 58-66.