Adolescent inpatient units: a position statement of the Society for Adolescent Medicine.

It is imperative that appropriate care of hospitalizd adolescents be included in the planning of health care services at local, regional, and national levels. The Society for Adolescent Medicine advocates the continuation and establishment of adolescent medicine inpatient units in both pediatric and general hospitals as an optimal approach to the delivery of developmentally appropriate health care to hospitalized adolescents. Such units should be geared to meeting the psychosocial needs of adolescents and the training needs of health professional students. In those hospitals in which there are too few admissions of adolescents to warrant a separate adolescent unit, a multidisciplinary team of health care professionals with expertise in adolescent health should set guidelines and policies for, as well as provide consultative services to, hospitalized adolescents. Whenever possible, teenagers admitted to such hospitals should be placed with other teens, rather than with older adults or infants or young children.