Background: Empirical descriptions of a 'good death' exist for older adults with cancer, and these have served as the foundation for providing quality end of life care. In contrast, little is known about what, if anything, constitutes a 'good death'…
This study was conducted to determine neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurses' opinions about the palliative care needs of neonates with multiple congenital anomalies. The study sample consisted of the 20 nurses who agreed to participate in the…
In Sweden, around 450 babies are stillborn every year. Usually, the parents stay at the hospital a couple of days after the birth and they can have the baby in their room. Due to the importance to keep a dead body cold it has, until recently, been a…
Background: When making end-of-life decisions for a child in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), standard practice is to involve parents in shared decision-making so that the values of parents are considered and decisions are made in the…
Background: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis has an uncertain and rapid trajectory after diagnosis. Palliative care is rarely utilized, although both patients and caregivers experience a distressingly high symptom burden. Most patients die in hospital.…
Studying perinatal death needs to involve cultural beliefs influencing women's perceptions and responses to illuminate their grief journey following the loss of their baby. There is an urgent need to provide a deep understanding in this area that…
Background: The aim of this study is to gain insight into the clinical experiences and perceptions that pediatric oncology experts, conventional healthcare providers, and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) providers in Norway, Canada,…
BACKGROUND: Medical technologies and technological advances have resulted in a growing number of children with medical complexity (CMC), many of whom would not have survived previously. Despite these advances CMC are still at high risk of morbidity…
Background: Parents of children with cancer admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) often obtain support from social workers and/or chaplains (SWs/Cs). Yet, empirical work describing the roles and activities of SWs/Cs caring for patients…
Learning Objectives: Social workers (SWs) and chaplains (Cs) support families of PICU cancer patients. Few data describe the activities and impact of SWs and Cs (SWs/Cs) in the PICU. This study examined the activities of SWs/Cs caring for PICU cancer…
AIM: The aim of this study was to seek views of UK children's and adult hospices on the availability and challenges of providing services for young adults with life-limiting conditions. BACKGROUND: Internationally, there are a growing number of young…
Background: Infants with life-limiting conditions are a heterogeneous population. Palliative care for infants is delivered in a diverse range of healthcare settings and by interdisciplinary primary healthcare teams, which may not involve specialist…
BACKGROUND: Although international guidelines recommend discussions about goals of care and treatment options for children with severe and life-limiting conditions, there are still few structured models of paediatric advance care planning. AIM: The…
CONTEXT: Primary palliative care (PPC) skills are useful in a wide variety of medical and surgical specialties, and the expectations of PPC skill training are unknown across graduate medical education. OBJECTIVES: We characterized the variation and…
Background: Many children and adolescents with incurable cancer and their families prefer to receive end-of-life care and to die at home. This implies a transition of care from hospital to home and presupposes the establishment of a well-functioning…
BACKGROUND: Residents often feel unprepared to care for dying patients and may benefit from more training. Little is known about factors in the clinical setting that promote resident learning about end of life (EOL) care. OBJECTIVE(S): This…
To examine the parent's experiences of bonding in the care of newborns who were seriously ill during the neonatal period and did not survive. Design: Data were collected through 7 interviews with 10 parents whose infants were cared for and died in a…
Few studies have described the goals and wishes of parents caring for their children with rare diseases, specifically when children are unable to communicate their preferences directly. The purpose of this study was to describe the parent's…
The demands of caring for a child with a life-limiting condition can have a profound impact on parents' health and wellbeing. Currently, there is no standard procedure for identifying and addressing the support needs of these parents. Aim: To assess…
Context Making end-of-life decisions in neonates involves ethically difficult and distressing dilemmas for healthcare providers. Insight into which factors complicate or facilitate this decision-making process could be a necessary first step in…
Context: Although palliative care (PC) continues to be integrated into pediatric oncological care, only a minority of patients with cancer receive a formal PC consult.
Background: Family conferences in the pediatric intensive care unit (ICU) often include palliative care (PC) providers. We do not know how ICU communication differs when the PC team is present. Aim: To compare language used by PC team and ICU…
This study aimed to identify parental needs for pediatric palliative care and obtain their opinions on developing pediatric palliative care in South Korea. This qualitative research design used inductive and deductive methods. The data were collected…
Background As understandings of the impacts of end-of-life experiences on parents’ grief and bereavement increase, so too does the inclusion of bereaved parents into research studies exploring these experiences. However, designing and obtaining…
OBJECTIVES: Understanding factors influencing quality of pediatric end-of-life (EOL) care is necessary to identify interventions to improve family and staff experiences. We characterized pediatric cardiac ICU (PCICU) staff free-text survey responses…
The promise of theory and model development makes grounded theory an attractive methodology to follow. However, it has been argued that many researchers fall short and provide a detailed description of only the research area or simply a quantitative…
Objectives: 1) Fill the knowledge gaps about best practices related to collaboration with bereaved families in projects related to end-of-life practices, palliative care and parental bereavement in paediatrics. 2) Identify best practices for…
Objective: To pilot feasibility and acceptability of HomeVENT, a systematic approach to family-clinician decision-making about pediatric home ventilation. Methods: Parents and clinicians of children facing home ventilation decisions were enrolled at…
Objective: To identify the perception of health professionals about neonatal palliative care. Method: A phenomenological qualitative study, a non-probabilistic sample, of 15 health professionals from a neonatal intensive care unit in northern…
Background: Limited research has examined the impact of a child's death from cancer on siblings. Even less is known about how these siblings change over time. Objective: This study compared changes in siblings 1 (T1) and 2 (T2) years after the death…
Background: Most parents vividly recall the weeks, days, and moments preceding their child's death for years to come. Dissatisfaction with communication about their child's condition and lack of guidance can contribute to stress prior to a child's…
BACKGROUND: Research ethics committees are commonly perceived as a 'barrier' to research involving seriously ill children. Researchers studying seriously ill children often feel that committees view their applications more harshly compared to…
