One North Carolina schoolteacher says if she had wanted to be a doctor or nurse, she would have gone to school for that.

But Julia Keyse and a lot of her colleagues are finding themselves doing some medical duties along with their teaching. For the past two years, she would prick the finger of one diabetic girl to check her blood sugar, and then adjust her insulin pump.

Across the country, schools are cutting back on nursing staff, or requiring nurses to work at multiple locations. And that's leaving teachers and other staff with some of the responsibilities.

It comes at a time when more students are dealing with serious medical conditions such as severe allergies, asthma and diabetes.

Federal guidelines recommend that schools have one nurse for every 750 students. But the National Association of School Nurses says the national average is one nurse for every 1,151 students.

And a quarter of the schools in the country don't have a nurse.