The Health Curve, used by nurses in community-based health care, is an educational tool for conducting goal-directed dialogues concerning lifestyle and health. The aim of this study was to investigate how child health nurses experienced the Health Curve as a tool for conducting dialogues with parents. Fourteen nurses were interviewed. The data were analysed according to qualitative analysis. The results showed that nurses working in child health care experienced the Health Curve as a useful tool for conducting health dialogues with parents. Through their work with the Health Curve, the nurses gained a greater insight into, and understanding of, the families' health and life situation. The results indicated that working with the Health Curve could increase the opportunity for nurses to provide parents with support early in the process, helping the family to lead a healthy lifestyle.

Aim and objective. To describe and explore adolescents’ and nurses’ perceptions of using a health and lifestyle tool in healthdialogues in the School Health Service.

Background. In Sweden, dialogues concerning health and lifestyle are offered to adolescents aged 14 years with the purpose of encouraging an interest in a healthy lifestyle. A health and lifestyle tool including a health questionnaire and a health profile has recently been developed, with the aim of facilitating the communication about health and lifestyle in these dialogues.

Design.Qualitative descriptive design.

Method. Twenty-nine adolescents and 23 nurses participated in focus group interviews, which were subjected to qualitative content analysis.

Results. The health and lifestyle tool was perceived as constituting a structure for the dialogues and as a clear and applicable starting point, focusing on individual aspects. The tool contributed to an understanding of the health situation and to the transmittal of health information on an individual as well as a group level.

Conclusion.The tool was perceived as constituting a useful structure for the dialogues about health and lifestyle. When it was used the individual’s health and lifestyle were concretised, which opened up for a dialogue and different aspects of health and lifestyle were detected. However, in some cases the outcome of the tool could be conceived as a stringent assessment and thereby complicate the dialogues.

Relevance to clinical practice.The use of a tool, such as the one used in this study, is one way to improve the dialogues in the School Health Service, allowing them to be more focused on the individual’s needs and to detect aspects that would otherwise not be so easily detected. The implications of this study include using the findings to guide counselling sessions in the schools and other health care settings.

Objective:The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the content and the verbal interaction in health dialogues between pupils and school nurses.

Method: Twenty-four health dialogues were recorded using a video camera and the conversations were analysed using the paediatric version of the Roter Interaction analysis system.

Results:The results showed that the age appropriate topics suggested by national recommendations were brought up in most of the health dialogues. The nurses were the ones who talked most, in terms of utterances. The pupils most frequently gave information about their lifestyle and agreed with the nurses’ statements. The nurses summarized and checked that they had understood the pupils, asked closed-ended questions about lifestyle and gave information about lifestyle. Strategies aimed to make the pupil more active and participatory in the dialogues were the most widely used verbal interaction approaches by the nurses.

Conclusion:The nurses’ use of verbal interaction approaches to promote pupils’ activity and participation, trying to build a partnership in the dialogue, could indicate an attempt to build patient-centred health dialogues. 

Clinical implications: The nurses’ great use of questions and being the ones leading the dialogues in terms of utterances point at the necessity for a nurses to have an openness to the pupils own narratives and an attentiveness to what he or she wants to talk about.