OBJECTIVE: Describe patterns of palliative care service consultation among a sample of ICU patients at high risk of dying. BACKGROUND: Patients receiving mechanical ventilation (MV) face threats to comfort, social connectedness and dignity due to…
Appropriate respite care for children with life-limiting conditions (LLC) and their families is the cornerstone of high quality paediatric care. The effect of caring for children with LLC on families, including parental needs, cannot be…
AIM: Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 1 is a relatively common, untreatable and invariably fatal neuromuscular disorder of early childhood. Psychosocial care is vital in management of families affected by this disease. There are few studies…
CONTEXT: Breaks in the delivery of health care (ie, [health]care gaps) occur in a large proportion of young people transitioning to adulthood. Developing interventions that prevent adolescents from dropping out of the medical system, as they leave…
Objective.: Disabling pediatric chronic pain is accompanied by a significant burden to those affected and by high societal costs. Furthermore, it bears the risk of aggravation into adulthood. Studies have shown intensive interdisciplinary pain…
OBJECTIVES: Pediatric subspecialty care, including multidisciplinary palliative care, tends to be located in urban academic centers or children's hospitals. Telehealth provides the opportunity to care for patients who would otherwise not be able to…
Sibling relationships reflect a unique childhood bond, thus the impact on a sibling when a child is seriously ill or dying is profound. We conducted a prospective, longitudinal qualitative study over two years using interpretive descriptive…
Simulation has been shown to improve the preparedness of practitioners in acute care. In this review we evaluate using simulation to prepare practitioners to deliver palliative care in multidisciplinary teams. The Joanna Briggs Institute approach was…
Pediatric residents report they are not sufficiently trained to communicate with families at a child's death. We performed a study to prove feasibility and assess whether simulation improves their communication and experience. Residents were assigned…
BACKGROUND: Hospice care for children with multiple complex chronic conditions (MCCC) is complicated given their unique health at the end of life (EOL). Little is known about the quality of the hospice care MCCC children receive and how that might…
Background Neonatology has made significant advances in the last 30 years. Despite the advances in treatments, not all neonates survive and a palliative care model is required within the neonatal context. Previous research has focused on the barriers…
Objective To describe medical, safety, and health care utilization outcomes associated with an early treatment model for neonatal opioid withdrawal. Study Design This is a retrospective review of 117 opioid-exposed infants born in a large regional…
Background: Researchers report difficulties in conducting research with children and young people with life-limiting conditions or life-threatening illnesses and their families. Recruitment is challenged by barriers including ethical, logistical and…
Background As part of the 2007 health reform in Germany the structure of outpatient palliative care for children and adolescents was adopted for the first time and then implemented in Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2009. Methods The introduction of Pediatric…
Pain and distress in the paediatric palliative care population can be very difficult to manage. Clinical scenarios range from the acute management of cancer-related pain at the end of life to the ongoing long-term support of children with complex…
Sleep problems have been identified as a potential antecedent of chronic pain and pain-related disability in pediatric populations. In adult studies, affect has been implicated in these relationships. This study sought to better understand the…
In spite of growing bereavement literature, the meaning of the lived experience of parental bereavement is not well understood. This article presents selected findings from a Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenological study which aimed to describe the…
OBJECTIVE: Compassion fatigue, burnout, and vicarious traumatization are prominent topics in the current literature on the impact of the rewarding but challenging work of healthcare professionals who care for patients with life-limiting illnesses.…
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…
BACKGROUND: Written resources in adult intensive care have been shown to benefit families facing end of life (EoL) decisions. There are few resources for parents making EoL decisions for their child and no existing resources addressing ethical…
BackgroundThe death of a newborn is a traumatic life changing event in the lives of parents. We hypothesized that bereaved parents of newborn infants want to have choices in the personal care of their infant at the end of life.MethodsParents who had…
BACKGROUND: This paper defends the ethical and empirical significance of direct engagement with terminally ill children and adolescents in PPC research on health-related quality of life. Clinical trials and other forms of health research have…
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…
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…
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).…
