GPs provide valuable continuity during age transition

EDITOR—We support the key elements of transitional care between adult and paediatric care advocated by McDonagh and Viner.1 However, they did not discuss the role of the general practitioner (GP) in managing chronic illness during and after transition. General practitioners play a central part in coordinating care after transition and are well placed to help provide continuity of care.

We conducted a small survey of carers of people with profound and multiple learning disabilities in Scotland. Carers were noticeably more dissatisfied by care on transition to adult services, failure of coordination of care being a central factor. In our follow-on survey of general practitioners in Lothian 65 of the 100 who responded to the questionnaire thought that they did not have adequate training to assess and treat people with profound and multiple learning disabilities, and 63 thought that they would benefit from additional training.

With an ever increasing number of general practitioners with special interests in specific chronic diseases, the possibility of training general practitioner specialists to help manage transition and beyond is appealing. We found an encouraging number of general practitioners (16 of those who replied) were interested in undergoing such specialist training.