A preliminary survey of Autism knowledge and attitude among health care workers and pediatricians in Tehran, Iran

  Autism spectrum disease (ASD) is not a common diagnosis for children presenting with neurodevelopmental delay before 36months in Iran. Although recent years have witnessed improvements in diagnosis of pediatrics psychological disorders but the role of referral system starting with health care workers (HCW) is not clear. Pediatricians were randomly selected from four teaching hospital of Tehran University of Medical Sciences Iran. HCW were randomly selected from 3 urban health care centers in Tehran, Iran. DSM-IV TR criteria for ASD was used to assess knowledge. Participants were asked to rate sixteen statements on beliefs about autism to assess attitude. one hundred and twenty two pediatricians and ninety HCWs with mean ± SD age of 36±4.7 years and 76.4% being female recruited. Pediatricians had significantly higher encounter with autistic patients (18% Vs 10%, p value=0.06) and parents of autistic child (17% Vs 12%, p value=0.07). But generally 209 participants (98.6%) declared that they are familiar with autism. There was no statistically significant difference between study groups in rating DSM-IV TR criteria for ASD as “necessary for diagnosis”. Age, gender and working experience, did not differ pediatricians or HCW answers (all p values > 0.05). Among HCW participants, higher educational level was associated with higher disagreement about “autistic children is schizophrenic”(p value=0.01). Also HCW with higher working experience had higher agreement rate with “autistic children needs special education” statement (p value= 0.04). There are still misconceptions about ASD regarding developmental, cognitive and emotional features in both HCW and pediatricians needed to be educated through national program.