Abstract
With regard to the diagnosis of developmental disorders in Japan, it has been reported that it takes a long time (3-10 months) for children to be examined to find out if they have a developmental disorder due to the limited number of medical specialists and specialized healthcare institutions. To resolve this problem, collaboration between the fields of medicine and education has been suggested, by using the "Inclusive Needs-Child Record (IN-Child Record: ICR)." ICR, however, was originally created for the teachers in the field of education, and as such, there are many items therein that are not needed by medical specialists. As such, the necessity of coming up with a new tool has arisen to facilitate the communication and collaboration between the fields of medicine and education. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a tool for effectively providing medical specialists with the information on children possessed by teachers, who spend the longest time with the children. The new tool was designed by combining ICR with DSM-5. To determine the core information that medical specialists need to know for the diagnosis of developmental disorders, a survey was conducted among 1,059 children from elementary and junior high schools in Okinawa Prefecture. From the results of the survey and of the correlation analysis between ICR and DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition), the items that should be included in the new tool were selected, with focus on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Finally, the tool for collaboration between the fields of medicine and education was established, consisting of 35 items in four domains. Through the future research, the tool needs to be further developed after verifying its reliability and validity.
