Children with life limiting conditions and their families have complex needs. Evaluations must consider their views and perspectives to ensure care is relevant, appropriate and acceptable. We consulted with children, young people, their parents and…
BACKGROUND: The information needs of parents facing end-of-life decisions for their child are complex due to the wide-ranging dimensions within which such significant events unfold. While parents acknowledge that healthcare professionals are their…
OBJECTIVE: To assess the involvement of volunteers with direct patient/family contact in UK palliative care services for children and young people. METHOD: Cross-sectional survey using a web-based questionnaire. SETTING: UK specialist paediatric…
PURPOSE OF REVIEW: An up-to-date summary of the literature on children's and adolescents' understanding of their own terminal illness and death. RECENT FINDINGS: Clinicians still find it difficult to speak with pediatric patients about death even…
BACKGROUND: Wide variations exist among perinatal hospices, and barriers to perinatal palliative care exist at the healthcare level. Research in the area of culturally sensitive perinatal palliative care has been scarce, a gap which this study…
OBJECTIVES: to understand the family's experience of the child and/or teenager in palliative care and building a representative theoretical model of the process experienced by the family. METHODOLOGY: for this purpose the Symbolic Interactionism and…
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Retrospective studies show that most parents prefer to share in decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment (LST) from their children. We do not yet know how physicians and parents communicate about these decisions and to…
Background Because of their individual rarity, genetic diseases and other types of rare diseases are under-represented in healthcare coding systems; this contributes to a lack of ascertainment and recognition of their importance for healthcare…
Attention bias modification treatment (ABMT) is a novel treatment for anxiety disorders. Although a number of other meta-analytic reviews exist, the purpose of the present meta-analysis is to examine issues unaddressed in prior reviews. Specifically,…
The authors examined psychosocial outcomes following the first year of bereavement, for 51 family caregivers, including both spouses and offspring. Researchers assessed caregivers during palliative care and again during the second year of…
Objective To examine the feasibility and format of the Promoting Resilience in Stress Management (PRISM) intervention among two groups of adolescents and young adults (AYAs) at-risk for poor outcomes: those with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) or cancer.…
BACKGROUND: The quality of shared decision making for children with serious illness may depend on whether parents and physicians share similar perceptions of problems and hopes for the child. OBJECTIVE: (i) Describe the problems and hopes reported by…
BACKGROUND: It can be difficult to explain pediatric phase 1 oncology trials to families of children with refractory cancer. Parents may misunderstand the information presented to them, and physicians may assume that certain topics are covered in the…
OBJECTIVE: This qualitative study set in the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom, aimed to examine the role of the general practitioner (GP) in children's oncology palliative care from the perspective of GPs who had cared for a child with…
OBJECTIVE: To describe a single-institution pilot study regarding prevalence and risk factors for delirium in critically ill children. DESIGN: A prospective observational study, with secondary analysis of data collected during the validation of a…
CONTEXT: Pediatric patients with solid tumors can have a significant symptom burden that impacts quality of life (QoL) and end-of-life care needs. OBJECTIVES: We evaluated outcomes and symptoms in children with solid tumors and compared patterns of…
BACKGROUND: The loss of a child is associated with an increased risk for developing psychological problems. However, studies investigating the impact of parents' faith and hope for a cure during the palliative phase on long-term parental…
Open and honest communication has been identified as an important factor in providing good palliative care. However, there is no easy solution to if, when, and how parents and a dying child should communicate about death. This article reports how…
In the latest of a monthly series in which patients and carers set the learning outcomes for readers, Alison Pearson asks healthcare staff to reconsider the concept of offering “false hope.” For more information about the series, contact Rosamund…
PURPOSE: To examine bereavement mental health service use, barriers to use, and factors associated with use in parents bereaved by cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A multicenter, cross-sectional study of 120 parents bereaved by cancer between 6 months…
BACKGROUND: Adolescents and young adults with cancer have inferior survival outcomes compared with younger pediatric patients and older adult patients. Lack of insurance may partly explain this disparity. The objective of this study was to identify…
BACKGROUND: A national clinical practice guideline for pediatric palliative care was published in 2013. So far there are only few reports available on whether an educational program fosters compliance with such a guideline implementation. We aimed to…
IMPORTANCE: Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) occurs in 1 to 8 per 1000 live births in developed countries. Historically, the clinician has had little to offer neonates with HIE other than systemic supportive care. Recently, the neuroprotective…
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Although many adults experience resource-intensive and costly health care in the last year of life, less is known about these health care experiences in children with life-threatening complex chronic conditions (LT-CCCs).…
IMPORTANCE: Parents' beliefs about what they need to do to be a good parent when their children are seriously ill influence their medical decisions, and better understanding of these beliefs may improve decision support. OBJECTIVE: To assess parents'…
OBJECTIVE: We sought to understand how healthcare professionals (HCP) conceptualise spirituality among seriously ill children and young people (CYP) and their families, and their experiences in dealing with spiritual issues that emerge in practice.…
Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine the distinct issues neonates/infants with life-limiting conditions and their families face during palliative home care and to enable physicians/caregivers to carefully address their needs. Data on…
OBJECTIVE: To describe variability in end-of-life practices among tertiary care PICUs in the United States. DESIGN: Secondary analysis of data prospectively collected from a random sample of patients (n = 10,078) admitted to PICUs affiliated with the…
OBJECTIVE: To examine the opinions of a perinatal health team regarding decisions related to late termination of pregnancy and severely ill newborns. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An anonymous questionnaire was administered to physicians, social workers,…
BACKGROUND: End-of-life care (EOLC) discussions and treatment-related decisions, including phase 1 trial enrollment, in patients with incurable disease are complex and can influence the quality of EOLC received. The current study was conducted in…
BACKGROUND: There is a general consensus that involving a specialized palliative care team in the care of children with advanced cancer can help optimize end-of-life communication; however, how this compares to standard oncology care is still…
