Screening for psychosocial problems in 5–6-year olds: a randomised controlled trial of routine health assessments

A Novel Triage Approach to Identifying Health Concerns

“…16 Triage preassessments are conducted in the absence of parents, whereas the traditional health assessments are conducted with parents present. Literature claims that the early detection of health problems is more accurate when parents are present, 23,25 but this study did not find a difference in identification rates between the 2 approaches.…”

Early Detection of Psychosocial Problems in Children Aged 5 to 6 Years by Preventive Child Healthcare: Has It Improved?

“…16 This RCT study included a baseline measurement and follow-up measurements. In order to measure the effect of this training, we compiled 2 datasets for this data source.…”

“…Wiefferink et al studied the effectiveness of this training; their results showed that the training led to improvements in the identification of moderate and severe psychosocial problems. 16 As a result of the increased emphasis on screening for psychosocial problems, we expect an improvement in the identification by CHPs of psychosocial problems in children.…”

Work Experience and Style Explain Variation Among Pediatricians in the Detection of Children With Psychosocial Problems

“…The acquisition of the underlying physician skills may be accelerated in several ways, for instance by on-the-job coaching for preventive pediatricians and by training preventive pediatricians in the use of guidelines. The latter has indeed been found to enhance the quality of problem identification, 14 even though this effect extinguished rather rapidly. The latter shows that continuous efforts are needed to attain a lasting improvement in the identification of psychosocial problems, which should preferably be imbedded in the entire work process of the PCH.…”

“…The sample was representative for the Dutch population. 14 We included only the children who were assessed during baseline measurement periods of the RCT (ie, before the initial training of the preventive pediatricians; n ¼ 4007). We excluded children of nonDutch ethnicity, that is, those with at least one parent born outside the Netherlands, from the analysis because previous research has shown that preventive pediatricians have more difficulty in identifying psychosocial problems in non-Dutch children than in Dutch children.…”