Outcomes of routine school entrant health assessments in Christchurch

The School Entrant Health Assessment (SEHA) programme was established in New Zealand to ensure that every child entering school was assessed by a nurse. This type of service has come under a lot of criticism and so we investigated the scheme in Christchurch, looking at the outcome of the physical examination. We did not explore the health promotion aspect of the nurses' work. We traced the path of 1281 new entrants. The nurses identified problems in 459 (35.8%) children and nearly half were given further appointments or referred on. However, it was judged that only 21 (1.6%) children might have actually received a significant long-term benefit. We feel that a non-selective approach to school entry health assessments is inefficient. Nevertheless, the opportunity to fully audit the health of new school entrants is most important and could be a valuable opportunity for health promotion.