Integrating a Parenting Assessment into Practice: Pediatric Providers’ Time and Perspectives

To integrate a parenting assessment into primary care and assess pediatric providers’ time needed to review it and their perceptions of the process.

The Quick Parenting Assessment (QPA) is a validated, 13 item parent support tool that assesses for healthy and unhealthy parenting practices. Higher QPAs indicate more unhealthy parenting being used. In a clinic serving low-income parents, the QPA was integrated into the 15 month, 30 month, 5 year, and 8 year well child visits. After each well child visit in which the QPA was administered, providers were invited to complete a one-page survey—315 surveys were included in the analysis.

Most QPAs (78.7%) were low risk (QPA <  = 2), 14.6% were medium risk (QPA = 3–4), and 6.7% were high risk (QPA > 4). The median time was 15–30 s to review low risk QPAs and 30 s to 1 min to review high risk QPAs. For most QPA reviews, health care providers reported that the QPA increased their objectivity in determining the level of support needed (68%), facilitated communication about parenting (77%), and increased the value of the visit (68%).

A validated parenting assessment tool, integrated into pediatric primary care, appears to work for pediatric health care providers. These findings have implications for supporting parents in pediatrics, value-based care, and disease prevention.