Sucheta M. Joshi, MD: Challenges in Transitioning to Adult Epilepsy Care

“It’s not uncommon to have conversations with the parents along with the adolescent. Whereas the adult model of care often is having conversations with the patient first and caregiver second.”

Making the transition from a pediatric specialist to an adult specialist can be difficult for patients with epilepsy. Adolescents are oftentimes faced with the challenge of taking on responsibility for their medications, learning how to handle their disease, and tackling situational issues without the help of their pediatric specialist who has helped them since diagnosis.

Sucheta M. Joshi, MD, understands the complexities that adolescents must navigate when they are forced to change doctors. She currently serves as a pediatric neurologist at Hurley Medical Center of the University of Michigan Hospitals-Michigan Medicine, and was recently involved in a study that evaluated EpiTRAQ, a transition readiness assessment tool that includes epilepsy-relevant items based on concepts in current epilepsy quality measures.

In an interview with NeurologyLive, Joshi discussed the impact that the EpiTRAQ tool can have on the transition process for patients, and detailed some of the problems that adolescents with epilepsy face during this transition into the adult care system.