POSTER PRESENTATION Open Access

Transfer-consultations for young people:how do we do?G Teilmann, K Boisen, J Pødenphant, M Zak, S Nielsen

From 18th Pediatric Rheumatology European Society (PReS) CongressBruges, Belgium. 14-18 September 2011

BackgroundThe need of well-planned transition programmes foryoung people is well established, and there is growingevidence of the benefits in terms of increased healthrealted quality of life, better disease knowledge andpatient satisfaction. However, we still need a betterunderstanding of the optimal models and the outcomesof establishing such activities.

AimTo establish well-planned transfer-consultations foryoung people with rheumatic diseases to ensure youth-friendly uninterrupted health care provision and evalu-ate the outcomes.

MethodsA mini-survey (N=10) and two individual interviews wasconducted among young patients in the pediatric out-patient clinic to explore the young peoples wishes for ayouth-friendly daily praxis as well as wishes concerningtransfer to the adult department. Based on these experi-ences we introduced shared transfer-consultations incollaboration between rheumatologists from the pedia-tric and the adult department for adolescents with rheu-matic diseases as a pilot-project. Participants in thetransfer consultaions were the young patient as well as arheumatologist from the pediatric (SN/MZ) and theadult department (JP). 30 adolescents have participatedso far.

ResultsFeed-back from young patients and doctors during thepilot-phase has over-all been positive. The pilot phasehas demonstrated a need for involving young people inthe planning process. We are currently developingyouth friendly information material about transfer frompediatric to adult rheumatolgy as well as a written policy

for transfer. In addition a systematic evaluation of thetransfer-consultations is needed. Results from semi-structured interviews with adolescents and doctors whohave participated in a transfer-consultation will takeplace in May-August 2011 and will be presented at theconference.

ConclusionYoung patients and doctors are positive towards sharedtransfer-consultations. Involving young people in theplanning proces has shown to be fruitful. A written pol-icy and a systematic evalutation is under preparation.

Published: 14 September 2011

doi:10.1186/1546-0096-9-S1-P272Cite this article as: Teilmann et al.: Transfer-consultations for youngpeople: how do we do? Pediatric Rheumatology 2011 9(Suppl 1):P272.

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Teilmann et al. Pediatric Rheumatology 2011, 9(Suppl 1):P272http://www.ped-rheum.com/content/9/S1/P272

© 2011 Teilmann et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CreativeCommons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, andreproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.