Abstract
The transition of young people with long-term health conditions from children’s or adolescent health services into adult services is a crucial time, yet processes continue to be disjointed, often falling short of what can be described as a ‘good experience’. Consequences are many, including deterioration in young people’s health, disengagement from services, with short-and-long term effects.Following the successful development of an exemplar Model of Improvement for Transition at Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust (LTHT), a National Transition Nursing Network is being implemented across England. A formal evaluation of this quality improvement model for transition is underway, funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing.This evaluation uses a multi-centre concurrent mixed methods design, with qualitative (interviews/auto-ethnography/case studies), and quantitative descriptive (surveys) data collected simultaneously over three phases with: young people, parents, transition champions and key professionals involved in the young person’s transition journey, the Burdett National Transition Nursing Network’s Lead Nurse and Regional Nurse Advisors. Data will be analysed using thematic analysis (interviews), content analysis (auto-ethnography) and descriptive statistics (surveys). The first step is a realist synthesis of the literature to address gaps in understanding what works for whom, in what circumstances, how and why it works, in relation to all young people transitioning from children’s/adolescent services into adult services. Using these combined methods, we will examine the mechanisms that explain ‘how’ the outcomes were caused and the influence of context.This presentation will outline the methods for the National Transition Evaluation Study. We will illustrate why it is necessary to go beyond the question ‘Does it work?’, to show how context has a role to play, how we will explore context to really understand why transition is working well or less well in different settings; essential to inform both practice, policy and future research.