Survey regarding the need of intensive training workshops for autism community

Aim: to determine the importance and need of intensive training workshops for autism related community study design: cross sectional study place and duration of study: wapda teaching hospital and asad clinic (eye & pediatrics centre) from january 2014 to january 2015 methodology: in this study we needed 3 groups. in the first group all those 100 parents whose children were already diagnosed of autism spectrum disorder and children age range was between 3 to 12 years were included without any discrimination of their education level. second group included 100 professionals. professionals were defined as those persons who were actively involved in management of children with autism either independently or in supervision with some experts or institute for at least 1 year .professionals comprised of speech & language pathologist,main stream teachers,clinical and applied psychologist and special educationists. in the 3rd group,100 doctors were included and majority of these were pediatricians and doctors from medical and allied and general practitioners. parents who were doctors were excluded from this group chi square was applied & p-value ≤ 0.05 was considered as significant. result: in the first group of parents,52 did not attend any workshop and 13 had no knowledge at all. while in the second group of professional,50 did not attend any seminar or training workshop and 14 had no knowledge at all. in the 3rd& most educated group of doctors 63 doctors did not attend any seminar or workshop and 21 had no knowledge at all. while doctors had poor knowledge regarding autism management followed by professional and then parents. conclusion: our study,we have observed that most educated and most influential group has lack of training and knowledge regarding autism management in spite of their interest in autism so emphasis should be given to intensify the frequency of autism training workshops for better understanding & management of affected community.