Transitional Care
Task Force

Transition care in medicine refers to the process of transitioning children and adolescents with chronic medical conditions from pediatric to adult care.  The transition care is a crucial phase in the healthcare journey for patients with chronic sleep disorders.  The medical management approach of children is often family focused and parental guided decision-making model of care while that of adults is patient focused and self-directed model of care.  This different approach between pediatric and adult care can lead to problems during transition.  Therefore, a well-structured transition program is very important to allow coordinated and collaborative process among patients, parents and pediatric and adult clinicians.  The goal of transition care is to provide uninterrupted and coordinated care before, during and after transfer of care leading to better long-term functioning and outcomes. There are well-organized transition cares in patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma, cerebral palsy and congenital heart disease.  However, there is limited data on how to transition children with chronic sleep disorders.   Due to increasing numbers of children with chronic sleep disorders, sleep providers are likely to encounter issues of transition. 

The International Pediatric Sleep Association (IPSA) has recognized the importance of this area and has formed a Transition Medicine Task Force to conduct a vigorous review of recent literature.  We focus our reviews on six core elements of health care transition and issues related to specific sleep disorders including sleep disordered breathing, central hypersomnia, sleep related movement disorders, and insomnia based on recent literature reviews.  In addition, we plan to provide practical information on how to apply various transitional care models including clinic based, coordinator lead and sequential transfers in the process of making structured transitions of children with sleep disorders.