Abstract
Parish reports a study of the social organisation of team meetings that decide whether to give a child a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). There is currently little known about the use of multidisciplinary team (MDT) approach, despite the strong recommendations for such an approach to be used when assessing for ASD. Three meetings from two MDTs were recorded, capturing the discussion of 16 children. Conversation analysis revealed three practices that encouraged information to be elaborated upon, even in time-pressured meetings. These ‘opened up’ the team discussions to consider different possible explanations for a child’s presentation. Parish concludes by discussing the clinical implications of these practices, including whether they could reduce the risk of over-diagnosing ASD.
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Notes
- 1.
The services referred to themselves as ASC services, since they preferred the term autistic spectrum condition. The term ASD has been used, however, for consistency within the literature.
- 2.
Adapted from term ‘candidate explanation’, Pomerantz et al. (2007) used to describe how patients give possible explanations for an illness. ‘Candidate suggestions’ is here used because the suggestions did not appear to be offered as a definitive explanation, but as a possible consideration.
- 3.
Pseudonyms have been used throughout, including those within the talk.
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Acknowledgements
Firstly, I would like to thank the two teams that took part in this study. I appreciate how exposing it must have been to have someone record their work and they demonstrated great practices in collaborative team working. Secondly, I would like to thank my supervisors: Cordet Smart for her encouragement and enthusiasm throughout, and Jacqui Stedmon for her calming and reflective influence. Finally, I would also like to say a big thank you to Dr Lindsay Aikman for all of your help and support.
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Parish, N. (2018). Does This Child Have Autism? Exploring Team Discussions When Diagnosing Autistic Spectrum Disorder. In: Smart, C., Auburn, T. (eds) Interprofessional Care and Mental Health. The Language of Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98228-1_8
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