Our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Bereavement Team, are adapting strategies from the RCPCH Situational Awareness For Everyone (SAFE) Programme, to develop a quality improvement program for neonates with palliative care needs.
Objective To describe the attitudes at the end-of-life decision (EOLD) making among Slovene paediatricians. Design A cross-sectional survey using questionnaire and case scenario. Setting Paediatric Health Care Institutions in Slovenia. Participants…
Organ donation after euthanasia has been performed more than 70 times in Belgium and the Netherlands combined (personal communication, Jan Bollen, 2018). These two countries allow for euthanasia in minors as well, while Luxembourg, Colombia and…
Context This quality improvement project took place in a district general hospital paediatric department. The target population was all doctors in training, consultants, ward nurses and community nurses.
Like any new specialty, paediatric palliative medicine is facing challenges as it establishes itself. While many of the required core skills have their roots in adult palliative medicine, its practitioners come from a range of paediatric backgrounds…
AIM To detail the everyday occurrence of pain in non-communicating children with cognitive impairment. METHODS Thirty four parents of cognitively impaired verbally non-communicating children completed pain diaries over a two week period. Each day,…
Background It is notoriously difficult to predict life expectancy for children with static neurological conditions (e.g. cerebral palsy). Identifying factors that make a child likely to be life limited and require an early palliative focus to their…
Background: Conflict in paediatric healthcare is becoming increasingly prevalent, in particular relation to paediatric end of life. This is damaging to patients, families, professionals and healthcare resources. Current research has begun to explore…
OBJECTIVE: To determine where children die following discharge from paediatric intensive care units (PICUs) in Great Britain and to investigate if this varies by discharge to palliative care. DESIGN: National cohort of PICU admissions linked to…
Objective To assess trends in place of death for children with a life-limiting condition and the factors associated with death at home or hospice rather than hospital. Design Observational cohort study using linked routinely collected data. Setting…
Background and aims Recent audit found common practice in the UK is to restrict visitors on PICU to 2 adults, including parents, to ensure staff’s safe patient access. This requires nurses to take responsibility for bed space visitors, however, this…
Background and aims Many sources of conflict exist in intensive care units between family’s members, team–family, or within the ICU team. These conflicts are frequents (48%) in adults ICU, and most are in relation to end-of-life decisions especially…
Introduction Health professionals in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) are regularly confronted with an infant’s imminent death. The death of a child is unnatural to parents and intensely affects them. Providing end-of-life care and follow-up…
Background Research shows that palliative care for children requires special attention and a coordinated approach to support the child and its entire family. In June 2012 a project was started in the Women’s and Children’s Clinic, Academic Medical…
Rarely do paediatric palliative medicine physicians have to break the news of a diagnosis of a life-limiting condition. It is much commoner for us to be faced with the question: "how long?". This cannot be answered with certainty, and yet a great…
Chronic pain is an important clinical problem affecting significant numbers of children and their families. The severity and impact of chronic pain on everyday function is shaped by the complex interaction of biological, psychological and social…
Aim Symptom assessment is a core component of paediatric palliative care. This audit aimed to determine whether the symptoms of children attending for routine short breaks in a children's hospice were assessed. The development of a formal symptom…
Introduction: Many paediatric hospitals are treating increasing numbers of children with medical complexity (CMC), diagnosed with chronic life-limiting illnesses and requiring life-sustaining home medical technology. These medically fragile children…
Background and aim Not all babies from whom neonatal intensive care (IC) is withdrawn die swiftly. We reviewed cases, characteristics, and outcomes of babies who unexpectedly survived for ≥1 week following IC withdrawal. Methods Retrospective review…
Background and aims Demise of a baby has profound consequences on the parents and providing appropriate support is the responsibility of multi-disciplinary team.1 Aim To compare the uptake of bereavement services between two tertiary neonatal units…
The concordance of nasal compared with nasopharyngeal swabs was assessed for the diagnosis of respiratory viral infections, and the degree of discomfort associated with each procedure was compared. The use of nasal swabs was shown to be as accurate…
Background Children with chronic illness and life limiting conditions are often more prone to respiratory illnesses due to problems with increased secretions and reduced ability to clear them. The aim of rapid response physiotherapists (RRP) in this…
BACKGROUND: Chronic conditions are the leading cause of mortality, morbidity and disability in children. However, children and caregivers are rarely involved in identifying research priorities, which may limit the value of research in supporting…
AIMS: To determine the incidence, manifestations, and best management of sleep disturbance in Sanfilippo syndrome (mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) type III). METHODS: Families were ascertained through the MPS societies of Australasia, the UK, and the…
AIMS: To determine the incidence, manifestations, and best management of sleep disturbance in Sanfilippo syndrome (mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) type III). METHODS: Families were ascertained through the MPS societies of Australasia, the UK, and the…
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…
Aims Children's hospices provide a range of services for children with life limiting (LLC) and life threatening conditions (LTC). Referral previously relied on obtaining supporting views from the child's paediatrician and there was often delay…
eizures are often initially treated at home. The standard treatment is rectal diazepam. Sublingual (SL) lorazepam is easy to administer but has not been well evaluated for efficacy in epilepsy. It has been reported to be effective for serial seizures…
Aims Patients with Trisomy 18 have a poor prognosis-only 5%-10% of children survive beyond the first year; however various clinical features of Trisomy 18 such as gastrointestinal, cardiac and central nervous system anomalies may benefit from…
Background Government policy identifies home as the preferred place of death (PPOD) for children and young people (CYP) and suggests a home death as an indicator of the quality of care. A recent systematic review found a lack of compelling evidence…
Aims: Medical advances and improved neonatal care have led to increased survival of children with complex healthcare needs. The aim of this literature review was to explore what is known about the psychological impact on parents of caring for…
Background As there was no specialist paediatric palliative care team in the region, we made a successful bid to NHS England's Marginal rate Emergency Threshold (MRET) and Readmission Fund for the Chameleon Project1 in 2018. The project has been…
Introduction Of the 74% of UK childhood deaths that occur in hospital, an increasing number-up to 65%-occur in PICU. There is little information about the impact of this on those who provide minute-to minute care of the children and their families,…
Growing numbers of patients with severe congenital heart disease (CHD) are surviving into late childhood and beyond. This increasingly complex patient group may experience multiple formidable and precarious interventions, lifelong morbidity and the…
Paediatric palliative care is characterised by the holistic care provided to children living with life-limiting and life threatening conditions, ranging from providing symptom control to bereavement support. Due to the nature of the conditions many…
