Paediatric Assessment Services in Primary Care: a critical review

We present a critical review of the child addressed services of current Assessment Services in Insalud dependent Primary Health Care Centres pointing to two aspects: 1. What activities are included in the Assessment Services and what should be there?. Most of the recommended preventive activities are dealt with. We explain the reasons to include hearing evaluation of children under two, recommendations to prevent sudden infant death, prevention of child abuse and reduction of passive smoking. The great absent of current assessment is the adolescent. We revise the activities for this period. We discuss the difficulties to include acute and chronic conditions in the Assessment Services. 2. Is current Assessment Services useful to paediatrician and/or to sanitary managers? As far as paediatricians is concerned, the evaluation of their activity is essential. Sanitary managers need tools to evaluate the ?product? of each centre in order to incentivate according to the results. The objetives of managers and professionals not always are compatible. It is only possible a real improvement in quality with the participation ad the involvement of the professionals. Managers should make easy the evaluation of the product and require the professionals the realisation of internal projects of improvement that, being coherent with the objetives of the organistation, give response to the professionals and patients interests and necessities.