What do young people want? The development of a pre-consultation guide

Introduction: Participation of young people with long-term conditions in health consultations can be limited by a lack of opportunity to learn appropriate skills within triadic consultations. Young people report feelings of intimidation and not being involved in or feeling confident to take part in conversations with health professionals. Interventions to promote participation of adults have been developed but young people’s needs have not been specifically addressed.This study evaluated a pre-consultation guide developed to promote young people’s participation in asthma review consultations. The guide was informed by the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) model of health behavior change and young people’s preferences for information. The model emphasizes self-efficacy as a strong predictor of health behavior change. Methods: The guide was evaluated in qualitative interviews with 24 young people and 9 primary care nurses . Findings: The preferred format of the guide was a booklet with colorful photographs and written by young people. Young people found the guide to be reassuring and supportive; in particular, peer-written example questions to ask, prompts to aid recognition and communication of asthma symptoms were seen as useful preparation for a consultation. Nurses suggested the guide could be a useful tool to aid young people’s communication of asthma-related experiences. Discussion: The HAPA was evaluated as an appropriate model to underpin the guide because young people were prompted to consider changing their communication behavior in future consultations. Quotations from young people were of particular value as feelings of self-efficacy are known to be increased by observing how peers perform . As far as we are aware this is the first time the HAPA has been used to underpin a pre-consultation intervention. Practice implications: Support to develop skills of question asking and communication of symptoms should be offered routinely to young people with long-term conditions to promote their participation in consultations