Transitioning Pediatric Patients Essay

The importance of successfully transitioning pediatric patients to adult care is becoming more important as children with chronic illnesses are living longer due to advances in the medical world (O 'Sullivan-Oliveira, Fernandes, Borges, & Fishman, 2014). There is a great need for transition planning to become a standardized part of the care that is provided to the pediatric population with chronic illnesses. Parents, Providers, and the patients themselves desperately see this need (O’Sullivan-Oliveira et al., 2014). Four focus groups were made up of multiple health care providers with different experience levels. They saw that six common themes came up across their discussions (O’Sullivan-Oliveira et al., 2014). This paper will look at the need for better transition planning from the view of multiple providers across different disciplines as well as the view of the families. Key terms used when researching articles were pediatrics, transition and adult care as well as limiting the search to the years 2012-2016. One of these articles is from the Pediatric Nursing Journal. As stated by Hopper, Dokken and Ahmann many children with complex childhood onset diseases are now reaching adulthood and they now require continuing care from …show more content…
The participants in the focus groups stated that main fears they viewed from the families was the fear of the unknown and the fear of the change in care and their involvement (O 'Sullivan-Oliveira et al., 2014). These thoughts were also discussed by the three families that were interviewed. They stated they felt like they were suddenly being pushed out and forced to find new doctors (Hopper et al., 2014). They also stated that these doctors had different ideas of care that conflicted with what they had been told for the past years as well as that they did not coordinate well with other specialities (Hopper et al.,