1848 Adolescents in hospital, which wards are they admitted to and is this appropriate?

Abstract

Objectives Adolescents' requirements differ from those of adults or children. 1 The Teenage Cancer Trust recommends specialist wards for teenagers aged 13-18 years, coinciding with the 'You're Welcome' quality criteria emphasising an importance for age-appropriate environments. 2,3We aimed to identify the number of teenage admissions to Leeds Children's Hospital, and their reasons for admission over a one-year period to investigate the potential need for an adolescent ward.Methods A retrospective service evaluation was used to identify 13-18-year-olds admitted to Leeds Children's Hospital between 1st September 2017 and 31st August 2018.PPM+ electronic records were used to identify patients' date of birth, date of admission & discharge, reason for admission, admitting ward, and specialty.Microsoft Excel Facilitated the analysis.Admissions were categorised based on admission reason, and whether they were elective or acute.Mean duration of stay, proportion of elective & acute admissions, and the proportion of outliers was calculated for each category.Results There were 1,856 adolescent admissions during this time from 1,363 distinct patients.Acute admissions accounted for 74.5% of admissions, whilst the remainder were elective.Average duration of admission was 3.8 days.Surgery formed the majority of admissions at 27.4% and medical comprising of 23.4%.16.9% of all patients admitted were outliers, the largest proportion of which were mental health patients, with 59.7% of admissions admitted to an outlying ward.Conclusions A large number of adolescents were admitted to the Leeds Children's Hospital, where patients would not have been in age-appropriate environments.Considering this and the number of outliers, this study has highlighted a need for dedicated ward space suitable for adolescent needs.

Topics & Concepts