Adolescents and youth in adult hospitals: psychosocial assessment on admission – an evaluation of the youth care plan

Abstract

Objective: The study was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of our previously published Youth Care Plan (YCP) as a tool for the psychosocial assessment of adolescents and young adults admitted to hospital.

Design: A comparative study of a quasi-convenient sample of two pre-defined groups.

Setting: Young people aged 12-24 years admitted to a university teaching hospital in Sydney, New South Wales (NSW), Australia.

Subjects: Group 1 had a completed YCP on admission and a HEADSS assessment during their admission. Group 2 had no completed YCP and had a HEADSS assessment during their admission. Group 1 n = 20 (15F) with a mean age of 18.8 yrs; Group 2 (7F) with a mean age of 20.1yrs.

Main outcome measure: Group 1 tests the hypothesis that the YCP is capable of identifying most psychosocial issues in a brief assessment, compared to the formal HEADSS interview. Group 2 tests the hypothesis that a significant proportion of young
people admitted to hospital have some psychosocial issues that may impact on management.

Results: The psychosocial risks detected with the YCP are 72.5%, of those identified by HEADSS interview. Young people with a standard care plan have the same number of risks identified as those with the YCP. Risk issues that YCP was less
likely to identify were drug use and depression.

Conclusions: The YCP provides an opportunistic screen for lifestyle risks in adolescents on admission to an acute adult care facility that can be undertaken by nurses in their routine care. Training may be necessary to provide confidence to ask about more sensitive risk issues.