The children's palliative care sector requires a specific set of knowledge and skills in its workforce. Maintaining high levels of competence and leadership can be challenging if staff move out of the sector, retire or several key people leave.…
Objectives: To identify barriers to delivering patient and family centred end of life care to children with neurodegenerative disease, of which seizures and myoclonic epilepsy is a significant symptom. To highlight good practice in delivery of end of…
Background: Historically, the social aspects of death, dying and bereavement have been given insufficient attention by palliative care services; this has had an adverse effect on how patients and their families experience end-of-life and bereavement.…
Background: Respiratory insufficiency in children with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions is common, it has a lasting impact, yet there is a paucity of evidence to guide clinicians in its management with home support. Objectives: Our aim…
Background: CHAS and NHS Lothian undertook a pilot project to review how joint working could enhance neonatal palliative care services' for families and staff. This case illustrates how collaborative working can enhance families' choices and…
Recent laws in Europe now allow for pediatric euthanasia. The author reviews some rationale for caution, and addresses why ensuring the availability of pediatric palliative care is an important step before allowing pediatric euthanasia.
Objective: The objective of this exploratory study is to describe communication between physicians and the actor parent of a standardized 8-year-old patient in respiratory distress who was nearing the end of life. Methods: Thirteen pediatric…
The majority of neonatal deaths occur after a decision to limit life-sustaining interventions (LSIs). Decisions on when to withhold/withdraw LSIs in fragile neonates are among the most difficult decisions in paediatric practice. Two rigorous…
Palliative care is needed for children with neurodegenerative and progressive neuromuscular diseases, inborn genetic (e.g., chromosomal disorders, deletion syndromes) or metabolic disorders, as well as for children with early brain lesions which can…
Pediatric palliative medicine/care (PPC) is an approach to care that focuses on improving the quality of life of children facing a life limiting condition (LLC). LLCs are classified by the ACT (Association for children with life-threatening or…
Objective: Palliative care for children is becoming an important subspecialty of healthcare. Although concurrent administration of curative and palliative care is recommended, timely referral to pediatric palliative care (PPC) services remains…
Palliative care in the NICU gets a bad rap to the point where it is not even clearly described to families. There is a strong need for education and dispelling the myths that surround this very important type of support.
CONTEXT: As children with life-limiting and life-threatening illnesses live longer, challenges to meeting their complex health care needs arise in homes and communities, as well as in hospitals. Integrated knowledge regarding community-based…
CONTEXT: Discussing end-of-life issues with patients is an essential role for chaplains. Few tools are available to help chaplains-in-training develop end-of-life communication skills. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to determine whether playing an…
BACKGROUND: The Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics has called for improvement in education and training of pediatricians in pediatric palliative care (PPC). Given the shortage of PPC physicians and the immediate need for PPC…
BACKGROUND: Paediatric palliative care is a nuanced area of practice with additional complexities in the context of intellectual disability. There is currently minimal research to guide clinicians working in this challenging area of care. METHOD:…
The number of children without a diagnosis in pediatric palliative home care and the process of decision-making in these children are widely unknown. The study was conducted as single-center retrospective cohort study. Between January 2013 and…
OBJECTIVE: Discussing the potential deterioration of a child who has a life-limiting condition has recognised benefits for future care, but can be challenging in a clinical context where uncertain illness trajectories are common. Existing research is…
OBJECTIVES: Anticipating case management is considered crucial in pediatric palliative care. In 2012, our children's university hospital initiated a specialized pediatric palliative care team (PPCT) to deliver inbound and outbound case management for…
This paper explores the challenges of resolving conflicting feelings around talking with a child about their terminal prognosis. When children are left out of such conversations it is usually done with good intent, with a parent wishing to protect…
Background. There is a need for increased palliative care training during pediatric residency. Objective. In this pilot study, we created a comprehensive experiential model to teach palliative care skills to pediatric residents. Our Comfort Care…
OBJECTIVE: Our aims were to report an analysis of the concept of cultural competency and to explore how the cultural competency of the palliative care workforce impacts the holistic care of young people with palliative care needs from South Asian…
The objective of this study is to determine if pediatric advance care planning (pACP) increases adolescent/family congruence in end-of-life (EOL) treatment preferences longitudinally. Adolescents aged 14-21 years with HIV/AIDS and their families were…
AIM: Perinatal deaths occurring outside the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are rarely recorded in outcome studies, despite having a direct impact on perinatal statistics. Our aim was to investigate the timing and modes of perinatal deaths that…
Palliative care for infants, children, and adolescents encompasses numerous transitions and thresholds of uncertainty that challenge conventional clinical medicine. Palliative care clinicians have opportunities to be more comfortable amid such…
BACKGROUND: The number of children and young people (CYP) living with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions is rising. Paediatric palliative care is a relatively new aspect of healthcare, the delivery of which is variable, with a wide range…
Parents of seriously ill children are charged with making complicated medical decisions, and many of those decisions are made during their children's hospitalizations. As medical staff seek to support parents, it is important for them to understand…
BACKGROUND: Pediatric fellows receive little palliative care (PC) education and have few opportunities to practice communication skills. OBJECTIVE: In this pilot study, we assessed (1) the relative effectiveness of simulation-based versus didactic…
OBJECTIVE AND BACKGROUND: Few previous studies have explored how pediatric palliative care (PPC) influences hospital utilization. We evaluated this among PPC recipients in a single center. METHODS: This is a retrospective cohort study of 109 patients…
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…
A palliative care service provider may add or decrease overall operational costs to the healthcare system. This study assessed the costs of managing respite care for children with life-limiting illness at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario…
OBJECTIVES: To identify and explore the educational needs of children's hospice doctors in England. DESIGN: A descriptive quantitative and qualitative survey. SETTING: Children's hospices in England. PARTICIPANTS: All children's hospice…
We conducted a pilot study to investigate the effectiveness of a home telehealth service for paediatric palliative care consultations. Over a 10 week period, 14 of the 17 caregivers approached to be part of the study agreed to participate. Families…
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 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…
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…
