בניית כלי סקר חדש לאיתור שינויים במצבם התפקודי של מקבלי שירות עם מוגבלות שכלית התפתחותית (מש"ה) - האם יש בכך צורך?

Background: Providing effective health care services to individuals with intellectual disability (ID) is extremely challenging due to shortage of skilled health care professionals, complex co-morbidities, rapid aging and communication difficulties of this population. Impaired communication effects individuals at all levels of ID`s.The people presenting daily familiarity with the person with ID are his direct caregivers. There is broad clinical and academic agreement of the need for a tool to screen for changes in communication abilities in this population. However, there is currently no screening tool, that is valid, accessible and can be easily and continuously used by direct caregivers of individuals with ID.. A screening tool should track immediate changes in the client's functional condition. The speech therapist (ST) is the health care professional best equipped to develop and implement such a tool due to the broad professional areas covered by the ST.There are some existing assessment tools evaluating the functional condition of people with ID, yet those are limited in their accessibility for simple periodical use mainly due to the following limitations:A. Some contain content appropriate only for children and adolescents B. Some are constructed to be self-filled, therefore appropriate only for those with mild ID.C. Some are constructed with content solely appropriate only for specific environments such as educational or residential facilities D. Some are complex and apply professional language making them usable only for health care providers.Therefore, the authors recommend a process leading to the development of a new screening tool, based on existing scales, which will be verbally simplistic, valid,reliable and available on-line, thereby accessible to direct caregivers.