Original articleBalancing Parental Involvement With Adolescent Friendly Health Care in Teenagers With Diabetes: Are We Getting It Right?
Section snippets
Setting
The study was conducted at a large socioeconomically diverse tertiary pediatric diabetes clinic in Melbourne, Australia. At the time of the study, the clinic had 1,589 patients with T1DM, of whom over half were aged >12 years. All young people attending this clinic are seen at 3–4 month intervals for medical review with a pediatric endocrinologist. Appointments at this clinic are overwhelmingly made by parents and adolescents are generally accompanied by their parent(s). The service offers all
Results
Surveys were provided to 146 eligible parents, of which 137 were returned (94%). Of these, 14 surveys were excluded because more than 10% of questions were unanswered. A further 17 were excluded because the questions about confidentiality were not completed. Thus, reported results are from 106 surveys. Of these, 98% of respondents had previously visited the diabetes clinic and 69% had visited the clinic more than 10 times. The median age (SD, range) of adolescents was 15 years (2.1,
Discussion
These data demonstrate that confidential care for adolescents with diabetes is uncommonly provided by doctors at this clinic and that parents of adolescents with diabetes have concerns about the provision of confidentiality to their children. The study sits at the interface of research from adolescent medicine that highlights the benefits of health professionals routinely consulting confidentially with young people as a strategy for engagement and psychosocial assessment [24], [25], [26], [27]
Funding Sources
Dr. Rony E. Duncan is partly supported through the Invergowrie Foundation. This study was supported by the Victorian Government's Operational Infrastructure Support Program.
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