Fifteen-minute consultation: Not the whole story-considering children's spirituality and advance care planning

Fifteen-minute consultation: Not the whole story-considering children's spirituality and advance care planning

Clayton M; Aldridge J

Archives of Disease in Childhood - Education and Practice

2019

Humans; Adolescent; Child; Female; Male; Middle Aged; palliative care; Attitude to Death; Preschool; Adult; Attitude to Health; Spirituality; Practice Guidelines as Topic; Pediatrics/*standards; Advance Care Planning/*standards; United Kingdom; Family/*psychology; paediatric practice; Palliative Care/*psychology/*standards

In a society of diverse views, faiths and beliefs, what can paediatric palliative care contribute to our understanding of children's spirituality? By failing to recognise and respond to their spirituality in this work, we risk missing something of profound importance to children and their families. We overlook their search for wholeness in the absence of cure and fall short of offering truly holistic care. This paper explores how developments in advance care planning and related documentation are addressing these issues. Since children's spirituality is elusive and rarely explored in practice, it aims to clarify our understanding of it with a variety of examples and contains suggestions for hearing the voice of the child amid the needs of parents and professionals.

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