Transitioning Youth to an Adult Health Care Clinician
For use by Pediatric, Family Medicine, and Med-Peds Clinicians
Transition Planning
Transition planning is the fourth element in the Six Core Elements of Health Care Transition™ (HCT). Planning for transition should be accomplished in collaboration with youth and parents/caregivers beginning in early adolescence and continuing until the youth transfers out of pediatric care. Transition planning encompasses several ongoing activities that are intended to build health literacy and independent self-care skills; assist in preparing for changes that happen at age 18; and guide the timing of transfer and the selection of a new adult clinician, taking cultural preferences into account. In addition, addressing the legal issues of supported decision-making should be a part of this planning, if needed.
Implementation
Read more information on the QI framework and methods in our Quality Improvement Primer.
Implementation: Transition Planning
For each core element, we have created an implementation guide to assist you in establishing a structured transition approach in your practice/clinic/health system. It offers quality improvement (QI) guidance on what information and processes should be considered when undertaking each core element, with examples from different care settings or patient populations.
Before starting, we recommend you read How to Implement the Six Core Element of Health Care Transition, which provides a set of practical start-up steps and tips to guide your health care transition approach. In addition, if you have more questions about the QI aspects of this implementation guide, there are links within it to a Quality Improvement Primer that offers further explanations for common examples of QI tools.