Dr. Mary Doherty:

It is a difficulty because the GPs are completely inundated with so many issues, particularly when there has not been training throughout the practice. We need to set up a training programme in Ireland and it needs to rolled out to all medical professionals. It is the same in secondary care where people are just not trained in any way to recognise autistic patients and do not have the capacity to put in place reasonable adjustments which would make such a significant difference to autistic people attending healthcare services.

Some work is taking place in the UK around the training for GPs. As I mentioned, we have developed this framework, Autistic SPACE, which I very much believe will help. This is a memorable way of keeping in mind the various aspects required for reasonable adjustments in healthcare.

Autism can be a very nebulous concept for many practitioners because of the heterogeneity initially. Autistic people present in so many different ways. Some of us speak, others do not, and some of us have co-occurring intellectual disabilities. There are just so many different ways of presenting, yet the core things we all share are those sensory issues, the need for predictability and communication differences. It is vital that we provide training.