title: Arrive, assess, advise.
abstract: There are few fields of nursing where the 'search for health needs' is made an explicit responsibility of nurses. In many specialities health needs are presented to nurses on a plate and nurses are able to leap straight in and meet them. Health visiting claims searching for health needs as its own because it is one of the four principles of health visiting set down by the Council for the Education and Training of Health Visitors (1977) . However, it is a principle that rightly belongs to all nurses.