8. Medical inspectors are mature men, graduates of well-known medical schools, with a fairly wide private practice. The school nurses are all registered nurses.
9. The number of school nurses should be increased as rapidly as possible until one nurse is provided on full time for every 2000 children enrolled in school. This would mean the employment of 11 additional nurses, increasing the staff from 27 to 34. As the population increases, more nurses should be added.
10. Office consultations between parents and physicians are among the most important activities of the Division and should be systematically encouraged. To this end arrangements should be made whereby definite hours for parent consultations are assigned to each school.
11. The Division of Medical Inspection has so organized its work that the attention of the staff is concentrated upon a different set of problems each year. This method is unquestionably effective in promoting growth and maintaining the interest of the staff. Care should be taken, however, to provide that within each four-year period special emphasis be laid upon the discovery and cure of each of the more important defects. Some plan should be adopted by the staff whereby effort may be concentrated on discovering and remedying defects at those ages where such expenditure of time and energy will secure the largest returns.
12. Adequate provision should be made for the correction of speech defects. Classes in speech training should be established under the direction of a teacher specially trained in this work.
13. Standardization of work is an especially noteworthy feature of the Cleveland system, and should furnish valuable suggestions to medical inspection departments of other cities. Through this standardization the same terms have uniform meanings when used by different members of the staff, and constant standards are employed in detecting and recording defects.
14. There are probably more than 50,000 unvaccinated children now in the Cleveland schools. Immediate steps should be taken to see to it that every child now in school is vaccinated, and that no child is admitted to school hereafter without similar protection. Principals, teachers, and parents should be held responsible for violation of the vaccination ordinance.
15. The Division of Medical Inspection should plan steadily to enlarge its field of activity in order to provide in constantly increasing measure better working conditions in the schools and to train the children into habits of health that shall be life-long. It is probable that the health work in the Cleveland public schools is unsurpassed by that of any other city in the country. The city now has an opportunity to lead the way into vastly important forward extensions looking toward the provision of health insurance for future generations.
16. Under the present organization, the official in charge of health work is responsible to the director of schools in part of his activities and to the superintendent in the rest of them. He should be responsible to the city superintendent alone, for health work in the public schools is education and not business.