What does the Youth Health Nurse do?
The 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)
- connect people to other support services inside and outside the school.
The 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
- healthy skin
- 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
The Youth Health Nurse works in the school but is employed by Queensland Health. The Nurse is required to keep information confidential (not talking about it 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.
The Youth Health Nurse is located in K block and is available on Mondays and Tuesdays. She can be contacted by calling the school on (07) 3290 7222 or emailing her at nurse.woodridge@health.qld.gov.au.