Browsing by Author "Mirjami, Sahimaa"

In this thesis parents’ views and experiences regarding the care for their children with ASD are examined. The aim is to improve the competence of Finnish health care professionals so that they are able to work more naturally with ASD children and their families. This research is a qualitative thesis and a web questionnaire is used to collect the data. The data consists of 18 responses from parents of children with ASD. Nine of the children were diagnosed with infantile autism and eight with AS. One child was diagnosed non-specifically with only a mention of ”autism spectrum”. In this questionnaire parents were asked to share their experiences about the care for their children and about the competence of the health care professionals that work with families of ASD children. Content analysis was used in this research to analyze the data. The results showed that parents of children with ASD have experienced challenges in their cooperation with the medical staff. The most common challenges under medical treatment were time pressure, pushy and commanding behavior, and the inability to work naturally with ASD children. Parents hope that the medical staff would use professional language that is easier to understand. They also hope that the patient and the family would be approached in a more holistic way so that communication would take into account the age and maturity of the patient. The first conclusion is that meeting ASD children and their families more holistically supports the delivery of successful treatment and increases trust between medical staff and the family. In order to have a more holistic approach, further training is needed for the medical staff. Therefore the second conclusion is that more education resources should be allocated to the studies of the medical staff who will be working with children with ASD and their families. The third conclusion is that the Finnish health care system should be able to provide care with less time pressure to ASD children and their families for example in the form of extended appointments.