Review article
Assessment of Youth-Friendly Health Care: A Systematic Review of Indicators Drawn From Young People's Perspectives

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2012.12.014Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

To review the literature on young people's perspectives on health care with a view to defining domains and indicators of youth-friendly care.

Methods

Three bibliographic databases were searched to identify studies that purportedly measured young people's perspectives on health care. Each study was assessed to identify the constructs, domains, and indicators of adolescent-friendly health care.

Results

Twenty-two studies were identified: 15 used quantitative methods, six used qualitative methods and one used mixed methodology. Eight domains stood out as central to young people's positive experience of care. These were: accessibility of health care; staff attitude; communication; medical competency; guideline-driven care; age appropriate environments; youth involvement in health care; and health outcomes. Staff attitudes, which included notions of respect and friendliness, appeared universally applicable, whereas other domains, such as an appropriate environment including cleanliness, were more specific to particular contexts.

Conclusion

These eight domains provide a practical framework for assessing how well services are engaging young people. Measures of youth-friendly health care should address universally applicable indicators of youth-friendly care and may benefit from additional questions that are specific to the local health setting.

Section snippets

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

We included any study of young people (10–24 years of age) that focused on measuring their satisfaction or experience of health care or any study measuring their views on the adolescent friendliness of services. Exclusion criteria were studies outside the target age group, studies focused on the outcome but from the perspective of others, or studies of the evaluation of youth-friendly interventions. Both quantitative and qualitative studies with any type of design were included. The search was

Study selection

The database searches yielded 1,044 potential titles and abstracts pertaining to studies of young people's views about their experience of health care and a hand search and contact with authors provided five additional studies. This was reduced to 884 titles after removing duplicates, and further reduced to 62 after applying the exclusion criteria to the abstracts. Review of these articles resulted in exclusion of a further 40 studies because they did not include indicators that related to

Discussion

This systematic review has identified those aspects of health care that are most important to young people. Four constructs (satisfaction with care, experience of care, quality of care, and patient-centered care) were identified, across which there was striking commonality of domains that described and measured young people's views of adolescent-friendly health care. Our major finding is that eight domains stood out as central to young people's experience of adolescent-friendly care. These

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