Health care must be developmentally appropriate for it be acceptable. Developmentally appropriate care is also recognised to underpin quality health care. A new paper from a national survey of 200 adolescents and young adults with cancer from the Centre for Adolescent Health’s ‘Youth Friendly Cancer Care’ project explores the extent to which young people with cancer across Australia report receiving developmentally appropriate care.

More than 90% of surveyed young people responded very positively around their engagement and communication with staff, who were largely reported as approachable, friendly and trustworthy.

However, they reported high levels of unmet needs around developmentally appropriate environments. Over 70% of young people reported unmet needs around age-specific physical spaces and social environments, such as adolescent and young adult inpatient wards. Young women, and young people treated in adult hospitals were more likely to report unmet needs around being able to talk to other people their own age, with or without cancer.

Whilst most of the young people reported that doctors had spoken to them about the impact of their cancer on their education (92%), home and family life (91%) and on approaches to health eating and exercise (91%), discussions about more sensitive but important topics were neglected. Most young people had not had conversations with staff around more sensitive topics such as sexual health, alcohol and other drug use, or fear and abuse in relationships. This was especially true for young female respondents. Importantly, these sensitive topics were much more likely to be raised with young people if they had the opportunity of a confidential conversation with their health care team.

In summary, while Australian services providing cancer care to young people are doing well around general aspects of communication, there is much room for improvement around more developmentally specific aspects, both of communication and of physical environments that promote social contact for young people.

The full article can be read here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00520-018-4420-x

Interested in learning more about developmentally appropriate health care for young people with  cancer, and other health conditions? Check out the Centre’s (and the University of Melbourne) postgraduate program on adolescent health and wellbeing.