What teenagers want: Tips on working with today's youth

Do you have an adolescent-friendly practice? Adolescents, especially boys, underutilize the health care system (1). Youth tend to use emergency departments or drop-in clinics, making it difficult to develop an ongoing relationship with a medical professional. Even though they are generally a healthy population, we know that adolescents have medical needs that must be addressed. Twenty per cent of teenagers in North America have a serious health problem, most commonly, obesity, asthma and eating disorders (2). Furthermore, the top three causes of death in the 12- to 18-year-old age group – motor vehicle traffic-related injury, suicide and homicide (3) – are not related to disease, but to modifiable risk-taking behaviours. Altering these behaviours requires partnership with the teenager. Thus, building a trusting and ongoing relationship with a provider becomes central to preventive health maintenance in this population. The goal of the present paper was to enhance the health provider’s ability to partner with teens by offering clinical pearls in the area of history-taking, providing practical pointers for negotiating the difficult issues around confidentiality and tips on integrating the role of families in the setting of adolescent-friendly health care.