Abstract
BACKGROUND: Youth with special health care needs often experience difficulty transitioning from pediatric to adult care. These difficulties may derive in part from lack of physician training in transition care and the challenges health care providers experience establishing interdisciplinary partnerships to support these patients. OBJECTIVE: This educational innovation sought to improve pediatrics and adult medicine residents' interdisciplinary communication and collaboration. METHODS: Residents from pediatrics, medicine-pediatrics, and internal medicine training programs participated in a transitions clinic for patients with chronic health conditions aged 16 to 26 years. Residents attended 1 to 4 half-day clinic sessions during 1-month ambulatory rotations. Pediatrics/adult medicine resident dyads collaboratively performed psychosocial and medical transition consultations that addressed health care navigation, self-care, and education and vocation topics. Two to 3 attending physicians supervised each clinic session (4 hours) while concurrently seeing patients. Residents completed a preclinic survey about baseline attitudes and experiences, and a postclinic survey about their transitions clinic experiences, changes in attitudes, and transition care preparedness. RESULTS: A total of 46 residents (100% of those eligible) participated in the clinic and completed the preclinic survey, and 25 (54%) completed the postclinic survey. A majority of respondents to the postclinic survey reported positive experiences. Residents in both pediatrics and internal medicine programs reported improved preparedness for providing transition care to patients with chronic health conditions and communicating effectively with colleagues in other disciplines. CONCLUSIONS: A dyadic model of collaborative transition care training was positively received and yielded improvements in immediate self-assessed transition care preparedness.