Approximately 25% of children with cancer die of their disease. Early in the course of a patient's illness, it is often impossible to determine whether the disease will be cured with cancer-directed treatment. When potentially curative therapy is no…
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…
Caring for a child with cancer is a demanding experience for both parents, yet most research focuses on mothers. In this paper, we present the findings of a secondary analysis of data from a study in which the care-giving experience of fathers is…
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…
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…
Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine the distinct issues neonates/infants with life-limiting conditions and their families face during palliative home care and to enable physicians/caregivers to carefully address their needs. Data on…
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…
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…
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…
Background: Pediatric patients with advanced cancer and their caregivers have unique psychosocial needs. Anxiety often worsens throughout treatment for both patients and parents, and, if undertreated, can cause suffering. Animal-assisted interaction…
This paper reports the development and validation of a disease-specific measure of health status and well-being of children with severe cerebral palsy (CP). The Caregiver Priorities and Child Health Index of Life with Disabilities (CPCHILD) was…
Setting goals and assessing outcomes are essential elements in palliative care. This paper describes a multiprofessional project, conducted under the auspices of clinical audit, which attempted to evaluate important outcomes of care. Over a six-month…
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…
The fear of "choking to death" is on the mind of most patients suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). So far, however, there have been no systematic surveys concerning the dying phase in a general ALS population. We therefore performed a…
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: Assessment of everyday functioning in children may depend to a considerable extent on the framework used to conceptualise functioning and disability. The Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) has incorporated the mediating…
Families who care for children with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) tend to experience severe psychological stress. Families react to TSC with guilt, chronic grief, and a gradual loss of spontaneity. Since TSC is a relatively rare pediatric…
This study was an exploratory inquiry into the role of music therapy for pre-bereaved informal hospice caregivers. Pre-bereavement has been an area of increased scholarly and clinical focus across multiple healthcare fields over the past decade, and…
Adolescents and young adults (AYA) with advanced or terminal cancer have distinctive medical and psychosocial needs that may not have been adequately provided by either pediatric or adult palliative care services. A discussion group, as part of a…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
A longitudinal feasibility study regarding quality of life and interventions for patients with advanced cancer or AIDS and their family caregivers was conducted to determine issues related to their recruitment and retention and to obtain pilot data…
A behavior therapy approach for obtaining cooperation during needle sticks was provided to 8 pediatric patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Therapy was provided during mock needle sticks. Hand lotion was applied to simulate…
A previous study found that parents of communicatively impaired children with severe cognitive impairments identified six core cues as indicating definite or severe pain in their child (J. Pediatr. Psychol. 27 (2002) 209). The frequency of each cue…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The objective of this study was to provide a preliminary description of trajectories of life-limiting conditions (LLCs) using qualitative experiential data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with families of children with LLCs, selected to…
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: When curative treatments are no longer options for patients dying of cancer, the focus of care often turns from prolonging life to promoting quality of life (QOL). Few data exist on what predicts better QOL at the end of life (EOL) for…
