Primary care professionals’ knowledge and attitudes on speech disfluency in pre-school children

Early intervention in fluency disorders such as stammering is desirable but this depends on early referral of disfluent children to speech and language therapists. The willingness to refer young disfluent children depends on, among other things, the knowledge and attitudes of primary care practitioners who are likely to be the main sources of referral. A postal questionnaire survey was carried out of all general practitioners (GPs) and health visitors (HVs) in the area of the former Highland Community NHS Trust to elicit this information. The results indicated that these professionals were more likely to refer young disfluent children to speech and language therapy if they themselves had received some post-graduate training about this disorder. More GPs than HVs were uncertain about the natural history of the disorder and about whether young disfluent children should be enrolled for therapy. GPs were more inclined to believe that there were personality traits characteristic of those who stammer and they were also more influenced by waiting lists in their decisions about referral. It would seem that some primary care professionals may have beliefs about stammering which were acquired in their training and which have not been updated. Appropriate post-graduate training seems to increase referral numbers. Training programmes that meet the needs of primary care professionals should be supported and evaluated.