Background Mental health issues among children are today a growing global health problem. The school nurse’s role is to work in a health supporting and promoting way. The school nurse has a unique opportunity to identify mental health issues since they meet all children during the health dialogs, which schools offer to all pupils on a regular basis. Aim To describe school nurses’ experience of identifying and supporting pupils with mental health issues through the health dialog. Method A qualitative design based on 16 semistructured interviews, based on Watson’s nursing theory, with school nurses working with pupils from ages 6 up to 12 years old. A conventional content analysis method was used to analyze the collected data. Standards for reporting qualitative research were used. Results The school nurses experienced both challenges and opportunities in their work in supporting children with mental health issues before, during, and after the health dialog. They described building relationship, importance of time, a wide range of collaborators, lack of common routines, and wish for more knowledge that emerged as important. The school nurse works with communication through creating relationships and cooperating with parents and other caregivers, teachers, and social services. Conclusion The school nurses experienced a lack in structure about how the health dialogs should be designed, implemented, and followed up. It is up to every municipality, school management, or school nurse to develop that work. That leads to unequal care for children and the lack of common screening questionnaires, making it more difficult to quantify mental health problems.
Laudon et al. (2026) studied this question.