ESPE Abstracts

Background: Adolescents with chronic disease need to develop independent self-care and learn to communicate effectively with their health care team in transition from pediatric to adult- health care systems. Older adolescents are going through many challenges related to physical and emotional development, education and career choices, family, and peer relationships. The presence of a chronic disease adds an additional burden. At this stage of development, transfer of care from pediatric to an adult facility becomes a major challenge for the adolescent, parents, pediatric and adult care providers. A lot of children and adolescents deal with severe and demanding endocrine diseases. In Sweden transition to adult care for patients with these conditions doesn’t have a standardized schedule.

Aim: To create and implement a standardized program for the transition process from pediatric to adult-care for adolescents suffering from endocrine conditions. To equip the young adult with tools to manage their own healthcare contacts, medication, and deal with their condition by themselves. To unify the educational transition program for medical professionals through the country.

Result: The National pediatric endocrine nurse group have initiated this project to produce a ”flowchart” that can be used for standardized education towards patients with endocrine diseases. The group created a worksheet called “Before the transition from adolescent care to adult care - necessary considerations” to use through the whole transition process. It is divided into three different ages periods due to maturity, from the age of 12 to adult. The worksheet includes a flowchart containing questions. The front side of the worksheet contains on top topics for age groups, at the bottom different kind of topics to talk about at visits. The backside of the worksheet has a flowsheet for special transition visits. There are suggested topics to talk about and questionary suggestions for the youngster to answer before the meeting.

Conclusion: Unified training in transition given by the endocrine nurse team from pediatric endocrinology clinic throughout the whole country could improve the understanding of the chronic disease and lead to greater adherence in adulthood. Implementing the proposed training material leads to patients receiving the same high quality of care and high level of education regardless of where they live in Sweden. A standardized transition from pediatric to adult care provides young adults to handle their own healthcare in a proper way. An early talk about the transition helps the youngster to manage their condition later in life.