Optimising Consultation Summaries to Promote Good Health

Patient participation in decision making processes about their care promotes patient satisfaction and confidence. As part of this, allowing patients to see letters written about them enables trust, encourages patients to be involved in decision making process and allow patient understanding. Given this, the 2000 NHS plan made it a requirement that all medical correspondence between health professionals is shared with patients.

It is estimated that 40-80% of information discussed during a consultation is forgotten immediately. Written summaries have shown to be an effective method of improving patient recall of information by 20.8%.

The literature on the benefits/disadvantages of consultation summaries is largely focused on adult patients with little research done to explore the views of adolescent population. Where the patient is a child, the literature is only focussed on parents of children and not the children themselves. Limited research has shown that parents/care givers report clinic letters being useful in assisting with better understanding and management of their child's condition.

Little is known about how young people value these letters in the same way. Only one brief questionnaire study focused on adolescent views and found that young people wished to receive consultation summaries.

Adolescence is an important time of an individual's life. This is the time when many independent health behaviours are established. During adolescence, young people start showing more interest in their own health and often wish to participate in decision making processes regarding their care. The role of health workers at this stage is to appreciate young people as individuals . Clinic summaries addressed directly to young people might play an important role in assisting with establishment of health behaviours and promoting good health in young people.

The aim of this research is to understand the views of adolescent patients on consultation summaries and identify factors can improve these summaries and subsequently their health and well-being.

Inclusion criteria

• Adolescents aged 12-18 years attending UCLH adolescent diabetes outpatient clinic

Exclusion criteria

• Young people who cannot speak English (effective communication with colleagues during the study is the major aspect of valid data collection)
• Young people who refuse to participate in focus group discussions