Obesity is a big health problem across the nation and overweight rates have doubled among children and tripled among adolescents. Childhood obesity is a serious issues in children because these extra weight may cause health problem that were once seen only in adult population, it includes hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes and it also could lead to depression and low self- esteem. (Mayoclinic.org, 2014). The school based programs can play important role to prevent/ reduce these issues because school environment has important influence on children’s life and they spent many of their waking hours at school environments. School nurses has tremendous opportunity to make changes in the area of overweight and childhood obesity and many school nurses are not utilizing the situations because of the different reasons. This study addresses school nurse’s perceived barriers to weight-related issues. This paper will focus on the background of the study, method of study, results of the study, ethical considerations and how this study results applies to the nursing.
A qualitative approach with the use of focus groups and discussion is how data was collected for this study. There were twenty two school nurses from three different school districts, ranging from suburban to rural areas for a total of seven focus groups. Each focus group session was led by a facilitator who introduced the topic questions, encouraged discussion, clarified responses and a second facilitator took detailed notes on the discussion. Additionally all focus groups were either videotaped or audio-taped for later review or transcription. Once all information had been reviewed and transcribed, identified themes were organized and evaluated. Researchers used NVivo8 to code and evaluate themes. The perceived barriers were then divided into the following five categories: Individual (nurse) Factors,