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Abstract: Palliative care focuses on providing relief from the stress and symptoms of serious illness. Obstetrician gynecologists (OBGYNs) manage a variety of complex clinical situations ranging from delivering a cancer diagnosis to caring for a…
PURPOSE: For children with advanced cancer and their families, communication about prognosis is critical. Unfortunately, data demonstrate that prognostic communication occurs infrequently and inconsistently across advancing illness. Prior to…
CONTEXT: Parent-clinician communication is essential for high-quality end-of-life (EOL) care in children with cancer. However, it is unknown how parent-clinician communication affects parents' experience in the first two years after their child's…
BACKGROUND: Many parents of children with advanced cancer report curative goals and continue intensive therapies that can compound symptoms and suffering. Factors that influence parents to choose palliation as the primary treatment goal are not well…
BACKGROUND: Bereaved parents experience life-long grief after the death of their child from cancer. Parents who can integrate their grief and maintain their social functioning early in bereavement, even in the setting of concurrent psychosocial…
Religion and spirituality often influence how people experience illness, death, and grief. The roles of religion and spirituality for parents who have lost a child to cancer remain underexplored. This study aimed to describe how cancer-bereaved…
BACKGROUND: The death of a child is one of the most devastating events a family can face, resulting in significant physical and psychosocial morbidity. Bereavement support programs have been developed in high-income contexts to address this need.…
PURPOSEEarly integration of pediatric palliative care (PPC) for children with cancer is critical to improving the quality of life of both the patient and family. Understanding physician perceptions of palliative care and perceived barriers to early…
BACKGROUND: In 2020, the Global Cancer Observatory reported 280,000 cases of childhood cancer worldwide, with a higher burden of disease and mortality rates in low- and middle-income countries. In 2022, the National Institute of Health reported 1708…
Context: Children are a uniquely vulnerable patient population with restricted abilities for self-advocacy and autonomy, risking infringement upon their dignity. Yet the concept of dignity in pediatrics remains underexplored relative to the adult…
Objective Sleep problems constitute a common and heterogeneous complaint in pediatric palliative care (PPC), where they often contribute to disease morbidity and cause additional distress to children and adolescents and their families already facing…
Baby M experienced hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy with four subsequent unsuccessful extubations. He would not survive without potentially irreversible long-term ventilation. His parents lovingly decided against interventions that would not "fix" his…
``Over the past two decades, pediatric palliative care (PPC) has evolved significantly, moving away from the concept of care provided solely at end-of-life and toward the concept of holistic, supportive care provided synergistically with…
IMPORTANCE: Early integration of pediatric palliative care (PPC) for children with cancer is critical for the quality of life of both patient and family. To improve access to PPC in resource-limited settings, barriers to early integration must be…
BACKGROUND: Pediatric palliative care (PPC) is a priority to improve pediatric hematology oncology (PHO) care in Eurasia. However, there are limited regional opportunities for PPC education. We describe the adaptation and implementation of a…
OBJECTIVE: To explore doctors' experiences of referring and admitting patients to the intensive care unit (ICU) at two tertiary hospitals in Malawi. DESIGN: This was a qualitative study that used face-to-face interviews. The interviews were…
Context Bereaved parents may have heightened risk for decisional regret; however, little is known about regret early in bereavement. Objectives We characterized decisional regrets endorsed by parents of children who died from cancer within the first…
PURPOSE:The early grief experience of parents of children who died of cancer remains understudied. Understanding psychosocial symptomology and functioning of parents early in their bereavement is essential to developing supportive interventions aimed…
BACKGROUND: Pain management at the end of life is a fundamental aspect of care and can improve patients' quality of life. Interventional approaches may be underutilized for pediatric cancer patients. OBJECTIVE: To describe a single institution's 10…
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Decisional regret is common in bereaved parents. We aimed to identify factors associated with and to explain patterns of parental decisional regret. METHODS: We used a convergent mixed-methods design including quantitative…
Context Early integration of palliative care (PC) in hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) has demonstrated benefits, yet barriers remain, including perceived lack of patient/caregiver receptivity despite no data on attitudes toward PC and limited…
Introduction: Pediatric hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) confers a high risk of morbidity and mortality and palliative care (PC) integration in HCT may improve outcomes. PC services can aid in advanced care planning, symptom management, and…
BACKGROUND: FAmily CEntered (FACE) Advance Care Planning helps family decision makers to understand and honor patients' preferences for future health care, if patients cannot communicate. Spiritual well-being is a key domain of pediatric oncology…
BACKGROUND: In medical oncology, palliative care principles and advance care planning are often discussed later in illness, limiting time for conversations to guide goal-concordant care. In pediatric oncology, the frequency, timing and content of…
Importance: Therapeutic alliance is a core component of patient- and family-centered care, particularly in the setting of advancing cancer. Communication approaches used by pediatric oncologists to foster therapeutic alliance with children with…
Broaching conversations about goals of care can be difficult for clinicians. Presently, the communication strategies used by pediatric oncologists to approach goals of care conversations are not well understood. We recorded disease re-evaluation…
CONTEXT: Children with cancer and their families have complex needs related to symptoms, decision-making, care planning, and psychosocial impact extending across the illness trajectory, which for some includes end of life. Whether specialty pediatric…
Context: Most children with cancer die in hospital settings, without hospice, and many suffer from high-intensity medical interventions and pain at end of life (EOL). Objective(s): To examine the effects of COMPLETE: a communication plan early…
PURPOSE: The burden of cancer disproportionately affects low- and middle-income countries. Low 5-year survival figures for children with cancer in low-income countries are due to late presentation at diagnosis, treatment abandonment, absence of…
10053Background: While great strides have transpired in pediatric cancer management in high-income countries (HICs), more than 80% of all children with cancer live in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs),where fewer than 20% will be cured. The…
PURPOSE: The Assessing Doctors' Attitudes on Palliative Treatment study was conducted in 11 Eurasian countries to assess physician knowledge of and structural barriers to integration of palliative care into pediatric oncology. After publication,…
Importance: The World Health Organization (WHO) designates early integration of palliative care as an ethical responsibility in the treatment of children with serious illness. Although structural barriers may influence provision of pediatric…
Background: Most children needing palliative care (PC) live in low- and middle-income countries. In Colombia, pediatric palliative care (PPC) knowledge among healthcare professionals (HCPs) is lacking as PPC is not included in the educational…
CONTEXT: Integration of palliative care (PC) into pediatric cancer care is considered best practice by national oncology and pediatric organizations. Optimal strategies for PC integration remain understudied, although growing evidence suggests that…
Outcomes: 1. Compare and contrast perspectives of multidisciplinary providers in regard to an embedded model of pediatric palliative care (PC) in routine cancer care 2. Propose an embedded PC model of care in the learner's own practice setting…
CONTEXT: Approximately 40%-60% of deaths in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) are in the context of de-escalation of life-sustaining treatments (LSTs), including compassionate extubation, withdrawal of vasopressors, or other LSTs. Suffering at…
The effect of pediatric advance care planning (pACP) on the sustainability of end-of-life treatment preference congruence between adolescents with cancer and their families has not been examined.To evaluate the longitudinal efficacy of the…
Context: Palliative sedation therapy (PST) can relieve suffering at end-of-life (EOL) in children with intolerable and refractory symptoms. However, updated and consistent guidance on PST practices are imperative. Objectives: We investigate current…
Background and Aims: Disparities in access to pediatric palliative care (PPC) and pain management remain an under-addressed global health issue, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Although integration of palliative care (PC) is…
