What does the school based Youth Health Nurse do?
The School based Youth Health Nurse works with students, school staff and parents to:
address concerns or problems about health and wellbeing;
create a more supportive, healthy school environment (a health promoting school).
The School based Youth Health Nurse can see young people in private to talk about:
health concerns
relationships
personal and family problems
smoking, alcohol or drug use
sexual health
problems with friends
feeling unhappy or stressed
puberty, growing up
healthy eating, exercise, weight and eating problems
getting in touch with the right service
anything that affects health and wellbeing
Confidentiality
Generally the law recognises that young people (usually over the age of 12 years) have the right to self-determine access to a health service. The SBYHN will assess if your teenager has a sufficient level of maturity and understanding regarding the issues and the health services proposed.
SBYHN is a voluntary service, it's really important to note that its student-led, it's a service that's provided for the young person, to empower the young person to make decisions such as seeking to access the SBYHN to improve their mental health, have more support at schools, building connections.
School based Youth Health Nurses work in schools but are employed by Queensland Health. The nurse is required to keep information confidential (not talking to others) unless the young person agrees the nurse can do otherwise.
However, if the young person the nurse is seeing is at risk of being hurt or hurting someone else, the nurse may need to discuss this information with another service or agency. If the nurse thinks it’s best to talk to someone else about the problem, they will usually explain the reasons why and talk with the young person about this.
Contact details
The School Nurse is available Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (8.30 am to 3.30 pm) and is based in C Block with the Wellbeing and Engagement team. You can access the nurse by drop in service, make an appointment, phone or email.
Download the School-based Youth Health Nurse Fact Sheet (PDF, 149KB).
School-based Youth Health Nurse - Bianca Springer
Telephone: (07) 5440 4266