BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Social Pediatrics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1570793
Early Language Screening at 30 Months of Age in Swedish Child Health Services -A Qualitative Study of Nurses' Perspectives
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
- 2Central barnhälsovård, Regionhälsan, Västra Götalandsregionen, Göteborg, Västergötland, Sweden
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Aim: To understand how nurses within the child-health services perceive the early language screening administered at 30 months of age.Methods: A qualitative study was conducted involving individual interviews with 15 nurses working in the child-health services of two districts in western Sweden. The interview data were analysed through content analysis.Results: The qualitative analysis yielded two main categories: (1) Experience and flexibility facilitate use of the screening method and (2) External factors influence administration as well as the assessment and analysis of screening results. Regarding the first main category, the nurses considered that the screening method often worked well, but their confidence in using it was influenced by the length of their working experience. The second main category highlights external factors influencing the nurses' administration of screenings and their analysis and assessment of screening results, such as the child's abilities and overall development, language barriers, parental expectations and waiting times in healthcare. The two main categories can be broken down into seven sub-categories.Our findings indicate that nurses' experiences with interpreting screening results vary depending on their professional background and on the children's abilities, with particular challenges arising in the case of immigrant children.
Keywords: Nursing, health visits, Child Health, Language screening, Language Disorders, child-health services, Qualitative content analysis, Multilingualism
Received: 15 Apr 2025; Accepted: 13 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Larsson, Häll, Granér and Carlsson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: AnnaKarin Larsson, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
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