Camp nursing is the provision of health services at a residential or day camp. It is seasonal, usually residential, and involves being the health service for a community of several hundred children and staff who are, for a few weeks, entirely dependent on it.
What the work actually is
The clinical range is wide and mostly minor: cuts, sprains, sunburn, insect bites, ticks, headaches, stomach upset, and the small orthopaedic injuries of children being physically active all day.
Two things take up more time than any of it.
Medication administration. A modern camp population arrives with a large volume of daily medication — stimulants, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, insulin, inhalers, allergy medication — and organizing, storing, and administering it accurately three times a day for a few hundred children is the job's real logistical core.
Homesickness and behaviour. The health centre is where a distressed child ends up, and camp nurses spend a substantial share of their time on emotional support, sleep problems, and the interaction between a child's mental health and being away from home.
Alongside that sits genuine emergency work: anaphylaxis, asthma, diabetic crisis, head injury, drowning risk, and the fact that the nearest hospital may be an hour away.
The two things to settle before accepting a post
Licensure. A nurse must hold a licence valid in the state where the camp is. That is easy to overlook for a nurse travelling for a summer, and the nurse licensure compact determines whether an existing multistate licence covers it or whether an additional one is needed.
Standing orders. A camp nurse practises with no physician on site. What may be given, for what, and when to send a child out has to be written in advance by a camp physician or medical adviser, signed, and specific — including over-the-counter medication, which is the most commonly overlooked part. A nurse handing out an analgesic without an order is practising outside scope, however trivial the drug. See scope of practice.
Standards and accreditation
There is no certification in camp nursing. What exists is a professional association — formerly the Association of Camp Nursing, now the Alliance for Camp Health — which publishes a scope and standards document for the practice and serves camp nurses, camp health staff, and camp leadership together.
Separately, camps may be accredited by the national camp association, whose standards cover health services, health screening on arrival, record-keeping, medication management, and emergency planning. Accreditation is voluntary, and it is the clearest available signal of whether a camp's health service is organized or improvised.
Who does it
Camp nursing is done by nurses taking annual leave, by school nurses whose year is free in summer, by retired nurses, by nursing students in support roles, and by nurses whose own children attend the camp — free or reduced camp fees for a nurse's children are a common part of the compensation. See school nursing.
Pay is generally modest and often includes room and board. Specialized camps — for children with diabetes, cancer, cardiac conditions, or severe allergies — pay better and require the corresponding clinical background.
The living arrangement is the thing nurses most often misjudge. A residential camp nurse lives on site, is effectively on call around the clock, and has very little privacy for the duration.
Related
Sources
- ACN History — Alliance for Camp Health, on the organization's renaming from the Association of Camp Nursing. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Resources — Alliance for Camp Health, including the scope and standards of camp nursing. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Introducing Alliance for Camp Health — American Camp Association. Accessed September 9, 2026.