Estimating The Global Need For Palliative Care For Children: A Cross-sectional Analysis
Pediatric Palliative Care; Children; Hospice; Need For Service; Needs Assessment; Pediatrics
CONTEXT:
The need for children's palliative care (CPC) globally is unknown. To understand the scope of the need and to advocate to meet it, more accurate estimates are needed.
OBJECTIVES:
The objective of this study was to create an accurate global estimate of the worldwide need for CPC based on a representative sample of countries from all regions of the world and all World Bank income groups.
METHODS:
This work builds on previously published methods developed by the International Children's Palliative Care Network, United Nations Children's Fund, and World Health Organization and tested in three African countries. The study used a cross-sectional design with quantitative data obtained from primary and secondary data sources. Estimation of the need used prevalence data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, mortality data from the World Health Organization for the specific diseases known to require CPC, and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) data on HIV prevalence. Representative data were analyzed for 23 countries representing 59.5% of the world's population.
RESULTS:
The findings show estimated need for CPC ranged from almost 120 per 10,000 children in Zimbabwe to slightly more than 20 per 10,000 in the United Kingdom. Overall, among the over 21 million with conditions that will benefit annually from a palliative care approach, more than eight million need specialized CPC worldwide.
CONCLUSION:
The estimation of need for CPC is a critical step in meeting the needs of children with life-threatening conditions and provides a sound platform to advocate for closure of the unacceptably wide gaps in coverage.
Connor SR; Downing J; Marston J
Journal Of Pain And Symptom Management
2016
Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).
DOI: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2016.08.020
Referring a patient and family to high-quality palliative care at the close of life: "We met a new personality... with this level of compassion and empathy"
Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Family Relations; Hospices; Quality of Health Care; Primary Health Care; patient care team; referral and consultation; empathy; Neoplasms; Palliative Care/standards; social support
Palliative care services are increasingly available to primary care physicians for both expert consultations and services to seriously ill patients. The United States now has more than 1400 hospital-based palliative care teams and more than 4700 hospice programs. We use an illustrative case of a palliative care hospitalization and intervention for a middle-aged man with severe pain from spinal metastases to discuss 4 key questions that a primary care physician faces in caring for the seriously ill patient with difficult symptom management: (1) Should I refer a patient to a hospital-based palliative care team or to hospice services for difficult symptom management? (2) If the patient is referred to a hospital-based palliative care team, what should I, as the primary care physician, expect? (3) When should I refer to hospice services a patient initially referred to a hospital-based palliative care team? and (4) How can I choose a hospice program that will provide competent, coordinated, and compassionate patient- and family-centered care? Primary care physicians now may choose among hospice programs, and the programs may vary in their quality of care. Validated tools to measure patient and family perceptions of the quality of hospice care are now available but progress in defining and measuring the quality of hospice care is still needed before actionable information will be available to guide the choice of hospice programs for physicians and consumers.
2009
Teno JM; Connor SR
Journal Of The American Medical Association
2009
Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).
Journal Article
<a href="http://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2009.109" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">10.1001/jama.2009.109</a>
The COVID-19 Pandemic: Early Ripple Effects in Pediatric Palliative Care
pediatric; burnout; resilience; pediatric palliative care; Covid-19; SARS-CoV-2; global
Palliative care, which aims to provide comprehensive, interdisciplinary, holistic care to children, adolescents and adults with life-threatening, and ultimately life-limiting conditions, is a discipline that has emerged as an integral component of healthcare systems throughout the world. Although the value of life-affirming palliative care (PC) has been shown across many domains, funding and acceptance of palliative care teams have been variable: some hospital systems have free-standing, dedicated interdisciplinary teams while, in many instances, palliative care services are provided "pro bono" by individuals with a special interest in the discipline, who provide PC in addition to other responsibilities. In this article, we hope to highlight some of the observations on the early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of PC in children.
Bustamante LM; Okhuysen-Cawley R; Downing J; Connor SR; Muckaden MA; Phillips M; Icaza A; Garzon N; Nakashima Y; Morgan K; Mauser D; Grunauer M
Children (Basel)
2022
Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).
<a href="http://doi.org/10.3390/children9050642" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">10.3390/children9050642</a>