Background: Youth with diabetes and their parents are not prepared for transition to adult care. Several studies suggest that transition planning should start early, however, the role for parental input in this process is not well defined. At our center, we are working on implementing a transition readiness class to better prepare our families for transition care to adult providers. Parents were administered a standardized questionnaire (Gottransition.org) to assess their perspectives on their child’s transition readiness.

Results: Of the parents of 19 youth (13M, 6F; 11 on pumps, 8 on multiple daily injections (MDI)) only 37% felt confident about their child’s transition preparedness while nearly all (84%) felt it was important for their child to prepare for the transition before age 22. Table 1 shows the parental assessment of their child’s healthcare navigation and autonomy.

Discussion: While there is recognized importance for improving transition preparedness amongst diabetic youth, parents have poor confidence in their child’s ability to do so, which was found to be even lower in patients on MDI than on a pump. Parents believe there is need for education particularly on healthcare navigation and autonomy. These findings support the need for implementation of a formal curriculum to educate diabetic youth on specific healthcare navigation elements before transitioning to adult providers.
Disclosure

K.R. Shank: None. M. Reall: None. K. Bangalore Krishna: None.

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