|School health care is based on the Primary Health Care Act and its task is to attend to pupils’ health care, to supervise health conditions at school and to arrange any specialised medical care that pupils may require.
The objective is to encourage pupils to adopt healthy lifestyles and to provide them with support in terms of development of self-esteem and management of life skills.
Each school has a designated school public health nurse and a school doctor, whose contact information and appointment hours are printed on bulletins distributed to pupils’ homes. Provision of health care services is based on the number of pupils at each school. The City of Helsinki Health Department recommends that one school public health nurse and one school doctor should not be responsible for more than 800 and 6,000 pupils respectively.
At the beginning of comprehensive school, parents fill in a form concerning their child’s current health status. The child’s health card is sent from the child health clinic to the school health care services. Based on this information, the child’s special needs can then be taken into account at schools. During comprehensive school, the school public health nurse aims to hold yearly appointments with every pupil and there are three standard doctor’s appointments (in forms 1, 5 and 8).