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This paper presents data on the results of a survey of medical facilities available for adolescents in the United States and Canada. Questionnaires were sent to 53 hospitals and replies were received from 49, showing that 24 adolescent wards and 30 adolescent clinics (22 part-time and 8 fulltime) were functioning in the two countries in 1967. Information was obtained about the location of, and patient allocation to, the inpatient facilities and the attitude of the respondents towards a separate ward for adolescents. Regarding the clinics, information was obtained on staffing, patient visits, and most frequent diagnoses. Emergency room and "special clinic" figures were not obtained, hence the leading cause of death in this age group—accidents—does not appear in the figures, which emphasize the considerable morbidity, nationwide, among adolescents from less serious chronic disease.

In an attempt to ascertain whether a separate ward for adolescents in a hospital is worthwhile, detailed questionnaires were sent to the medical and nursing staff of hospitals with adolescent programs previously surveyed by the authors. Some of these hospitals had separate adolescent wards and some did not. Sixteen of them were then visited personally by us. We examined the facilities and interviewed both staff and patients. For comparative purposes adolescents in four hospitals without adolescent programs were also interviewed. The consensus of the medical and nursing staff, and the patients, was that a separate adolescent ward is worthwhile.

Help for adolescents must be based on a thorough knowledge of normal somatic and psychological development, and how these are influenced by disease. Often adolescents – and their parents – need considerable help simply in appreciating the normality of the wide variations in the timing of the events of puberty. Observation of parent-child interaction and how the adolescent responds to or avoids stressful subjects can provide clues to how well the patient is adjusting to the somatic changes she is undergoing.