School-based telemedicine: teachers', nurses' and administrators' perceptions

In 1997, a telemedicine project began in Kansas which brought health-care d irectly into elementary schools using interactive video-links. The project initially involved four schools, but was expanded to cover 10 schools, incl uding two middle and one high school. We examined the organizational issues related to telemedicine links to schools. Specific attention was paid to t he perceptions of the nurses, teachers and key administrators. The research involved analysing archive data and interviewing participants in the proje ct from the schools and the medical centre. The results showed the difficul ties in delivering health-care, especially by telemedicine, to under-served urban children. However, the data also revealed that these can be overcome . Once they had experienced it at first hand, almost all concerned began to see telemedicine as an effective and important asset to the delivery of he alth-care.