The foundations for a child's further development are laid during early intensive development. An important area is the development of communication skills, deviations from which can significantly affect the development of other areas and indicate developmental difficulties. Primary care pediatricians play a key role in identifying these deviations during preventive check-ups. When deviations are identified, they must refer the child to a developmental clinic, where a developmental pediatrician will examine them and, if necessary, refer them to other specialists.
The purpose of this master’s thesis is to investigate Slovenian pediatricians’ self-assessment of their ability to recognise deviations in the early development of children’s communication abilities, their evaluation of past studies on this topic, their working conditions, and when they would refer a child for further developmental assessment and to which professionals. We were also interested in whether differences exist between pediatricians and developmental pediatricians employed in developmental clinics. For the purposes of this study, an online questionnaire was created and completed by 58 pediatricians and 12 developmental pediatricians.
The results of the study indicate that participating pediatricians consider the knowledge acquired during their studies and specialisation in early communication development to be insufficient and emphasise the need for additional training in this area. Both groups recognise the importance of the pediatrician’s role in the early identification of developmental deviations, but pediatricians particularly highlight practical limitations such as lack of time, unclear guidelines, and limited access to standardised screening tools. For several specific early communication skills, developmental pediatricians report higher self-assessed competence than pediatricians, representing a statistically significant difference between the groups. Regarding the age at which they would refer a child for further assessment, the two groups are largely consistent. Among the professionals to whom they would most frequently refer a child, pediatricians most often listed developmental clinics and speech and language therapists.
The study offers insight into the self-assessed abilities of Slovenian pediatricians to identify deviations in early communication development and highlights the need for additional pediatric training in this area, improvements in working conditions, and the development of diagnostic tools and clear guidelines to support effective early identification of developmental deficits.
|
