Experiences Among Health Care Personnel with Remote General Movement Assessment for the Prediction of Cerebral Palsy in High-Risk Infants.

Background/Objectives: General movement assessment (GMA) is a clinical assessment tool used to predict risk for cerebral palsy (CP) in young infants. Equal access is challenging since GMA-trained personnel is a limited resource. An implementation study aimed to offer all high-risk infants born in the Central Norway Regional Health Authority equal access to GMA as part of the standard follow-up. This study explored the local health care personnel (HCP) experiences with early risk assessment for CP in young infants using remote GMA. Methods: This was a qualitative study with one focus group and four individual interviews. Participants were HCP from the local follow-up clinics who had experience with GMA. Analyses were inspired by Malterud's systematic text condensation. Results: Attitudes towards GMA were, in general, positive, and GMA was considered an important and gentle examination contributing to earlier initiation of correct follow-up actions and appropriate treatment. The GMA results could improve communication between HCP and parents, and lead to a closer local municipality follow-up if GMA result was abnormal. Parents were given an active role with home video recording, which was considered family empowering. Especially pediatricians wanted more detailed information about the qualities of spontaneous movements to support clinical decision-making. Conclusions: This study indicated that further implementation of the GMA method to assess the risk of CP in high-risk infants could be recommended, and that GMA was a gentle method for the purpose. As suggested by pediatricians in this study, more detailed assessments using the GMA beyond FMs could be further explored as support to clinical decisions. The insight from this study may inform implementation in similar contexts.