Exploring parents' perceptions on the importance and feasibility of child-centred consultations of 5-11 year olds in general practice

Background: The active involvement of children in their health care has been shown to increase compliance and improve outcomes. Despite this, children in the 6-12 year group have little meaningful involvement in General Practitioner (GP) consultations, contributing to less than 20% of interactions. Aim: To explore parents' perceptions on the importance and feasibility of child-centred consultations. Methods: Purposive sampling was used to recruit parents from a primary school in London. Three audio recorded focus groups were conducted, transcribed verbatim, and subsequently thematically analysed. Results: While most parents acknowledged the importance of child-centred consultations, they legitimately questioned their child's ability to make decisions. Parents attributed low child participation to several factors including the perceived approachability of the GP, whether their child had met the doctor before, their child's personality and the general lack of time during consultations. Parents described their own anxiety and worries surrounding their child's health care which lead to their role as their child's advocate, decision maker and protector during GP consultations. Conclusion: This study confirms the importance of child-centred consultations and highlights numerous barriers which need to be overcome to achieve greater child involvement in consultations. If the findings were to be replicated in future larger studies, then it could lead to changes in both training and, crucially, how child-parent-doctor consultations should be carried out in general practice.