Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-021-00283-6 REVIEW PAPER Working Beyond Capacity: a Qualitative Review of Research on Healthcare Providers’ Experiences with Autistic Individuals Rae Morris 1,2  · Andrea Greenblatt 3  · Michael Saini 3 Received: 19 April 2021 / Accepted: 26 July 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021 Abstract Barriers to access and delivery of efective healthcare for autistic individuals have received attention in the social science literature. Less understood is why and how these barriers exist. The purpose of this qualitative review was to explore and interpret salient fndings and characteristics of qualitative research that has examined the experiences of healthcare providers providing care to autistic individuals. A systematic information retrieval of electronic databases resulted in 15 qualitative research studies that met the inclusion criteria. Analysis of thematic fndings and characteristics across studies was conducted, and a deeper interpretation highlighted an emphasis and reinforcement of the complexities of supporting autistic individuals in the healthcare context. Considerations are ofered for diversifying and strengthening future research in this area. Keywords Qualitative synthesis  · Qualitative health research · Autism · Healthcare · Health services · Service provider Introduction Autistic individuals represent a unique population in the healthcare system and several studies have reported signif- cant barriers faced by this population with regard to access and delivery of efective healthcare (Barber, 2017; Dern & Sappok, 2016; Nicolaidis et al., 2013; Vogan et al., 2017). Reported challenges have highlighted systematic gaps as well as issues of miscommunication, stigmatization, and margin- alization created and reinforced through interactions with healthcare providers (Nicolaidis et al., 2015; Vogan et al., 2017). Autistic individuals have identifed barriers including not knowing where to access support, feeling overwhelmed with steps required to access support, challenges in describing their needs, unmet service needs, and negative experiences with healthcare systems and providers (Vogan et al., 2017). Heterogeneity across the autistic spectrum means that one autistic person’s experience of their diagnosis is not repre- sentative of another’s and that autistic people have a variety of diferent needs (Masi et al., 2017; McCormick et al., 2020. For instance, autistic individuals with mental health and/or medical concerns have reported being signifcantly less satisfed with healthcare services than those without these additional needs (Vogan et al., 2017). In a recent scoping review that documented themes across both quantitative and qualitative studies, Morris et al. (2019) noted recurring feedback from healthcare providers expressing that they lacked the knowledge and skills as well as training and support to efectively work with autistic indi- viduals. In addition, healthcare providers expressed the need for better coordination and systematic changes at all levels of the healthcare system to better address the needs of autistic individuals. While this scoping review provided important insights about the experiences of healthcare providers, it was limited by methodology that focused on breadth of the issues, rather than depth. To address this gap, this current meta-synthesis review was conducted to explore in-depth the more salient themes across qualitative studies and deepen our understanding of the characteristics of this research to date in order to identify common and missing elements, * Andrea Greenblatt andrea.greenblatt@utoronto.ca Rae Morris rae.morris@alumni.ubc.ca 1 School of Social Work, University of British Columbia, 2080 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada 2 UBC Institute of Mental Health, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, 2255 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 2A1, Canada 3 Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, 246 Bloor St West, Toronto, ON M5S 1V4, Canada