School health care is preventive health care. The fundamental purpose of school health care is to support the healthy growth and development of each pupil, strengthen the conditions for learning and healthy adulthood, prevent social exclusion and support the parents’ educational work. School health care services continue the efforts started by child health clinics to monitor children’s health and implement the national vaccination programme.
Health examinations form the backbone of school health care. We carry out comprehensive health assessments in grades 1, 5 and 8. These include examinations by both the school nurse and a doctor, and we also invite the guardians to attend.
We carry out more limited health examinations in grades 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9. During these visits, we assess the child or young person’s growth, development and wellbeing and discuss their health habits.
We can implement the health examinations carried out in grades 2, 4 and 6 as group examinations, in which case we provide health advice to the whole class together. Additionally, we meet with each pupil individually to assess their growth and talk about what is going on with them.
School health care also provides pupils with the vaccinations started at the maternity and child health clinic in accordance with the national vaccination programme. During health examinations, we check the pupil’s vaccinations and supplement them if needed. If you do not want your child to receive vaccinations, please contact the school nurse.
Read more about the national vaccination programme on the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) website: Vaccination programme for children and adults – THL(Link leads to external service)
Dental clinics send appointment invitations to parents and guardians for the oral health check-ups of pupils four times during comprehensive school.
Contact and viewing your child´s records
We prefer to communicate primarily via the Maisa portal. As a parent or guardian, you can also contact us via the Wilma system. Children and young people can interact with us via the Apunappi (‘help button’) digital contact channel in the Aula learning portal. For security reasons, we do not use email.
As a parent or guardian, you can act on behalf of your underage child in Maisa. Log in to Maisa with your personal login credentials and go to your child’s profile using the ‘Switch’ button in the top menu. In Maisa, you can see the notes recorded by school health care services about your child’s visits, subject to certain restrictions.
How to send a message in Maisa:
- Go to Maisa(Link leads to external service)
- Select ‘Messages’ and click ‘Send new message’.
- Select ‘Send a message about care or services’ and select the subject of the message.
- Select ‘School health care’ from the list and send a message to the school nurse.
If you have an appointment ticket, you can book an appointment in the ‘Book Appointment’ section on the Maisa homepage.
Children aged 10 and above can also use Maisa with their own login credentials if they have a means of strong authentication, such as online banking credentials or an electronic ID card.
Frequently asked questions – Frequently asked questions about Maisa(Link leads to external service)
You can also contact the school nurse via Wilma, but please do not send any health information via Wilma.
How to send a Wilma message:
- Select ‘Messages’ and compose a new message by clicking the icon in the upper right corner.
- Click the plus icon next to ‘Recipients’.
- Under ‘Staff’, select the person to whom you wish to send the message.
Pupils in grades 7–9 who attend a school in Helsinki can send a message to their school nurse via the Aula portal. The Apunappi contact channel can be found under the Nutti squirrel icon on school computers.
The pupil sends the message on a secure form, and a professional will reply within 1–5 days.
School nurses carry out health examinations at the school and are unable to answer the phone while attending to a pupil. If you cannot contact the school nurse via Maisa or Wilma, please contact the school nurse primarily by text message.
You can find the phone numbers of the school nurses on your school’s website.
A child or young person can visit the school nurse without an appointment during the school-specific office hours.
Besides Maisa, a parent or guardian can also see the entries recorded about their child’s visits in the MyKanta online service, subject to certain restrictions.
In MyKanta, make sure that you have received a notification containing information about Kanta Services. To ensure that different service providers can see each other’s entries, please also give your consent to data sharing in Kanta on behalf of your child. You can find this section under:
Data access management→ Health data access management → Consent to patient data sharing
Further information:
www.kanta.fi/en/consent-to-sharing-patient-data(Link leads to external service)
Acting in MyKanta as the guardian of a minor – Kanta.fi(Link leads to external service)