BACKGROUND: Children with medical complexity need complex assistance, that considerably affects caregivers' quality of life. They often need multiple medications, with a consequent relevant risk of errors or poor compliance. Galenic (or compounded)…
BACKGROUND: Child mortality rates during hospitalisation for acute illness and after discharge are unacceptably high in many under-resourced settings. Childhood vulnerability to recurrent illness, and death, is linked to their families' situations…
Background This study aimed to assess the prevalence of depression, depressive symptoms, and quality of life among caregivers of pediatric cancer patients and the associated risk factors. Methodology In total, 73 participants were recruited for this…
Children with medical complexity (CMC) have complex chronic conditions with significant functional impairment, contributing to high caregiving demand. This study seeks to explore impacts of parental caregiving for CMC. Fifteen caregivers of CMC…
OBJECTIVE: The James Lind Alliance (JLA) offers a method for better aligning health and care agenda's with the needs of patients, carers and clinicians by bringing them together in a Priority Setting Partnership (PSP). In this paper, we draw…
OBJECTIVE: To shorten the Patient Engagement In Research Scale (PEIRS) to its most essential items and evaluate its measurement properties for assessing the degree of patients' and family caregivers' meaningful engagement as partners in research…
Objective There is growing emphasis on health care organizations to ensure that lay people are meaningfully engaged as partners on research teams. Our aim was to explore the perspectives of patients, family members and informal caregivers who have…
BACKGROUND: Metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) is an autosomal recessive lysosomal disorder caused by mutations in the arylsulfatase A gene. Until now, there has been little information on the burden of MLD on patients and their caregivers. This…
BACKGROUND: Prior research has demonstrated that the presence of regret and unfinished business is associated with poorer adjustment in bereavement. Though there is a growing literature on these constructs among caregivers of adult patients, the…
Children living with palliative care needs are less engaged in play, despite its importance in their lives. The environment may have a crucial role in supporting these children's play. Understanding the importance and impact of environmental factors…
Importance: Advance care planning (ACP) is the process of discussing values and preferences for care to help inform medical decision-making. Children with medical complexity (CMC) often have a shortened life span with an unpredictable clinical course…
Background: Children with severe neurological impairment (SNI) commonly receive care in the hospital setting necessitating frequent interactions with clinicians. Yet, parents report that clinicians often have a limited understanding of their child's…
CONTEXTS: Inadequate pain management in community paediatric palliative care is common. Evidence to inform improved pain management in this population is limited. OBJECTIVES: To explore the barriers and facilitators to paediatric community-based pain…
BACKGROUND: Understanding what makes a 'good death' in the child with life shortening illness is important, as it informs appropriate and effective end-of-life care. Above play, peer contact and opportunities for assent, prior literature review found…
CONTEXT: Parents of children with severe neurologic impairment (SNI) often face high-stakes medical decisions when their child is hospitalized. These decisions involve technology/surgery, goals of care/advance care planning, or transitions of care.…
BACKGROUND: The number of children requiring long-term home ventilation has consistently increased over the last 25 years. Given the growing population of children with complex care needs (CCNs), this was an important area of focus within the Models…
OBJECTIVE: Pediatric chronic pain evaluation includes self-reports and/or caregiver proxy-reports across biopsychosocial domains. Limited data exist on the effects of caregiver-child discrepancies in pediatric pain assessment. In children with…
BACKGROUND: Prior research has demonstrated that the presence of regret and unfinished business is associated with poorer adjustment in bereavement. Though there is a growing literature on these constructs among caregivers of adult patients, the…
OBJECTIVES: Families describe decision-making about gastrostomy tube (g-tube) placement as challenging. We measured caregiver decisional conflict before and after initial g-tube consultation to evaluate the potential benefit of a decision aid and…
Background: Symptom management for infants, children and young people at end of life is complex and challenging due to the range of conditions and differing care needs of individuals of different ages. A greater understanding of these challenges…
Spinal muscular atrophy type 1 (SMA-1) is a severe neurodegenerative disorder, which in the absence of curative treatment, leads to death before 1 year of age in most cases. Caring for these short-lived and severely impaired infants requires…
PURPOSE: Family caregivers of children with cancer face emotional, psychological, and spiritual challenges coping with their child's illness. For ensuring comprehensive multidisciplinary pediatric care, there is a need to understand and define what…
Background: Children with severe psychomotor impairment (SPMI) often experience sleep disturbances that severely distress both the child and his or her parents. Validated questionnaires for the assessment of parents' distress related to their child's…
BACKGROUND: Children dying of a life threatening disease suffer a great deal at the end of life. Symptom control is often unsatisfactory, partly because many caregivers are simply not familiar with paediatric palliative care. To ensure that a child…
Patient race/ethnicity affects health care utilization, provider trust, and treatment choice. It is uncertain how these influences affect pediatric care. We performed a systematic review (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO, Cochrane, and…
Music enables us not only to reflect upon the world in which we live but also to become active agents in creating and shaping it and ourselves. The Treehouse Choir is an innovative, therapeutic programme open to all adult service users and staff at…
BACKGROUND: Legacy-making, actions or behaviors aimed at being remembered, may be one strategy to enhance coping and improve grief outcomes for bereaved parents and siblings. While legacy interventions have been developed and tested in pediatric and…
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to describe and quantify the impact of caring for a child with Dravet syndrome (DS) on caregivers. METHODS: We surveyed DS caregivers at a single institution with a large population of patient with DS.…
Abstract Background: There is a paucity of research evidence to guide health care providers' practice in pediatric palliative care. At the same time, some clinicians and Institutional Review Boards are reluctant to approve such studies because of…
AIM: In childhood, severe psychomotor impairment (SPMI) is associated with profound sleep disturbances. With the help of newly developed and validated measures, we systematically assessed how much a child's sleep disturbance affects parental sleep…
AIMS: To explore the lived experience of caring and care planning for a child with a life-limiting condition (LLC). METHOD: Using van Manen's conceptualisation of hermeneutic phenomenology, three focus groups were conducted with 21 paediatric…
BACKGROUND: Promoting resilience is an aspect of psychosocial care that affects patient and whole-family well-being. There is little consensus about how to define or promote resilience during and after pediatric cancer. OBJECTIVES: The aims of this…
Abstract Background: The experiences of young people who have siblings with life-limiting illnesses are not well understood. Aim: The study proposed to identify the concerns of siblings of pediatric palliative care (PPC) patients. Design and…
BACKGROUND: There is growing awareness that different terminal diseases translate into different family caregiver experiences, and the palliative and supportive care needs of these families are both similar and unique. Family members caring for…
Medical advances in recent years have led to an increased life span for children with progressive, neurodegenerative illnesses. The purpose of this hermeneutic inquiry was to explore the experience of families caring for their child at home.…
BACKGROUND: Childhood cancers evoke various emotional reactions in caregivers which can impair their well-being and roles. Little is known about caregiving and which cancer-associated factors are related to caregiver's depression in…
BACKGROUND: The aim of the study was to make a comprehensive inventory of the physical, psychological, and social symptoms of children with cancer and their parents during the palliative phase and the extent to which health professionals address…
The objective of this paper is to evaluate the educational value of a documentary film about family caregiving for patients with brain tumors. The method used in this study is a pre-post survey among neurosurgeons, neuro-oncologist, and other…
BACKGROUND: Several guidelines for cystic fibrosis (CF) caregivers exist, but information about their implementation is lacking. METHODS: Adherence to European Consensus Guidelines for CF was studied by sending surveys to named healthcare…
CONTEXT: The number of parents who care for a chronically ill child is increasing. Because of advances in medical care, parental caring tasks are changing. A detailed description of parental health-related quality of life will add to the…
