The plea for school nurses came a little over a year ago, when Tooele mom Paula Tuck circulated a petition to put one nurse in every Utah school — there are well over 900 — after her daughter accidentally overdosed on asthma medication when no school nurse was on hand.

"The committee needs to think outside the box ... to make sure (student) safety is protected," Mayne said. "If we don't take action, we're going to have our policy dictated by lawsuits."

Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper and Senate chairman of the education budget subcommittee, shared concern but questioned where the schools would get the nurses.

Utah — and the nation — is amid a nursing shortage. It's not from a lack of interest. Some Utah colleges have reported years-long waiting lists for students wanting to enter nursing programs, but colleges lack space and faculty to educate them.

The state's nursing initiative has given just under $1 million a year to open up programs to more students. Several colleges hired more faculty and created accelerated programs, and graduates have increased by about one-third since the initiative took hold a couple years ago, said Donna Lister, president of the Utah Organization of Nurse Leaders.

But colleges still are not ahead of the shortage and have approached the Legislature for more money.

Lott suggests training teachers who want to become nurses and luring retiring nurses to schools. Yet many forces will be pulling on retirees, including universities seeking faculty.

School nurses also make less money than hospital nurses — Lott says she took a $4-per-hour pay cut when moving from a nursing home to a school. Yet some are inclined to go the school nursing route regardless, and maybe a state financial incentive would boost interest, Lott said.

"Certainly we're not going to be able to wake up tomorrow and have enough nurses," Lott said. "I don't have all those answers ... but there are some ideas outside the box."

Stephenson wondered if emergency medical technicians might help, but that would mean acting outside their purview, said Diane Forster-Burke, chairwoman of the Board of Nursing and a Westminster College professor.

Still, it's not impossible to churn out more nurses and slowly fill needs in both hospital and school settings, Lister said.

"Certainly they need to support nursing education or there is not hope of meeting those needs," Lister said. "I think that it's also very reasonable for them to develop a plan for supporting nurses in the schools, because, obviously, they have to be paid if they're going to work there. And that's one of the issues: just telling school districts you have to have so many nurses, when they're already trying to figure out how to fund teachers to keep class sizes down."

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E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com