Family Relations and Outcome of Health Promotion Dialogues with School Nurses in Denmark

The purpose of this study was to examine if family structure and family relations were associated with children's perceived outcome of the contact with the school nurse.Methods: Danish school survey (1998) with a study population of 11-, 13- and 15-year-olds, response rate 88.0%, n=5,205, data collection by the internationally standardised HBSC questionnaire. Independent variables were family structure and confident relations with father and mother; outcome measures were student-reported outcomes of the dialogue.Results: The OR for having discussed the health dialogue with parents was 0.63 (0.51–0.78) among boys who did not have confident relations with their mother and 0.43 (0.35–0.52) for girls who had no confident relations with their mother.Discussion and conclusion: Lack of confident relations with parents were associated with less positive outcome of the dialogue with the school nurse. The practical implications of the study are that school nurses organise their health promotion efforts in order to support students and their families in develop mutual positive relations.