Abstract
Over 10 million children and adolescents in the United States have a special healthcare need and 750,000 to 900,000 of these patients must transfer from pediatric to adult centered care every year. Pediatric post-kidney transplant patients are a small population of patients requiring transition. Currently there are no best practice guidelines in place to direct facilities in developing pediatric to adult transition programs. The U.S. healthcare system is not adequately prepared to manage these children. In response to this growing need, The Health Care Transition Research Consortium has developed a framework to guide further research and the American Society of Transplantation (AST) has created various transition tool templates for organ transplant teams to create action plans that prepare patients and families for transition to adult providers and to assess both self-perception of care and actual readiness to transition. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to enhance the post-kidney transplant pediatric to adult transition process and ensure consistent patient preparation. The aims included 1) evaluate the current processes for transition education and documentation of transition preparation, 2) educate RNCCs on the use of the AST tools to ensure consistency with patient education and transition preparation, 3) implement the new protocol and AST transition tools, 4) evaluate RNCC knowledge surrounding the AST tools and the transition process, and 5) evaluate RNCC subsequent use of the tools and EMR checklist.