Is Your Practice Youth Friendly?

Adolescence presents a challenging time for many young people. Their inexperience and propensity for risk-taking can result in unhealthy choices that can impact on physical, mental and social well-being.

There are some major principles to consider and strategies which can be employed, to ensure your practice is youth friendly and can support youth through their adolescent years.

• Improve adolescents access to your services
• Foster ‘youth friendly’ values and attitudes among practice staff
• Ensure practice staff are culturally sensitive in youth attitudes
• Adopt a friendly, flexible and non-judgemental approach
• Be sensitive to adolescents concerns about privacy and confidentiality
• Understand youth health rights and explain Medicare procedures and billing, including obtaining Medicare card
• Develop familiarity with community and youth services in order to refer youth to appropriate support
• Avoid stereotyping
• Display adolescent specific posters, pamphlets and magazines
• Display waiting times
• Develop a practice policy on how to deal with adolescents covering consent, crisis calls and billing procedures
• Bulk bill adolescents where possible
• Promote your practice to local schools and youth service networks