Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Caring for Children.

Given the limited number of pediatric-specific palliative care programs, palliative care providers of all disciplines may be called on to care for infants, children, and adolescents with serious illness. This article provides a review of the unique components of pediatric palliative care, including key roles within an interdisciplinary team, pediatric developmental considerations, use of medical technology and complexities of symptom management in children with serious illness, hospice utilization, as well as pointers for discussions with families regarding a patient's quality of life and goals of care.

Identifying the Types of Support Needed by Interprofessional Teams Providing Pediatric End-of-Life Care: A Thematic Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Despite the number of interprofessional team members caring for children at the end of life, little evidence exists on how institutions can support their staff in providing care in these situations. OBJECTIVE: We sought to evaluate which aspects of the hospital work environment were most helpful for multidisciplinary team members who care for patients at the end of life and identify areas for improvement to better address staff needs. DESIGN: Qualitative thematic analysis was completed of free-text comments from a survey distributed to interprofessional staff members involved in the care of a recently deceased pediatric patient. A total of 2701 surveys were sent; 890 completed. Free-text responses were provided by 306 interprofessional team members. SETTING/SUBJECTS: Interprofessional team members involved in the care of a child who died at a 348 bed academic children's hospital in the Midwestern United States. MEASUREMENTS: Realist thematic analysis of free-text responses was completed in Dedoose using a deductive and inductive approach with line-by-line coding. Descriptive statistics of demographic information was completed using Excel. RESULTS: Thematic analysis of the 306 free-text responses identified three main support-related themes. Interprofessional team members desire to have (1) support through educational efforts such as workshops, (2) support from colleagues, and (3) support through institutional practices. CONCLUSIONS: Providers who participate in end-of-life work benefit from ongoing support through education, interpersonal relationships, and institutional practices. Addressing these areas from an interprofessional perspective enables staff to provide the optimal care for patients, patients' families, and themselves.

Care of the complex chronically ill child by generalist pediatricians: lessons learned from pediatric palliative care.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Parents of children with complex chronic conditions report fragmented care, unmet medical needs, and financial strain from health care costs. The aim of this study was to identify both prevalent themes discussed during pediatric palliative care consultation of patients with complex chronic conditions cared for by pediatric generalists and variation in consultation content by age and timing of consultation in disease course. METHODS: Forty randomly selected initial inpatient or outpatient consultation notes authored by the pediatric palliative care team at an academic, tertiary care children's hospital. Inclusion required that patients were primarily cared for by general pediatricians, pediatric hospitalists, or pediatric intensivists, instead of subspecialists. Qualitative analysis by 5 team members utilizing consensus-based findings was used to develop themes. Descriptive statistics were used to describe variations in themes across age and disease course. RESULTS: Common themes included thorough review of patient baseline functioning, current symptoms, assessment of family's understanding of the prognosis of the patient, coordination of communication with other medical teams and outpatient health care services, consideration of caregiver resources and burdens, and offering a framework for decision-making. Variation in consult themes by age/disease course included more discussion of communication problems and symptom management when patients were at their baseline, but otherwise little variation was found. CONCLUSIONS: Common themes covered in initial consultations correspond with documented unmet needs for chronically ill children. There was no significant variation in consultation themes by age/disease course, suggesting that generalists could broadly apply palliative care techniques to improve family-centered care.

Use of simulated electronic mail (e-mail) to assess medical student knowledge, professionalism, and communication skills.

BACKGROUND: Physicians communicate with patients using electronic mail (e-mail) with increasing frequency. Communication skills specific to e-mail do not appear to be taught explicitly in medical school. Therefore, the effect of an instructive session on effective e-mail communication was examined. METHOD: Four simulated e-mails from a parent were developed. Students responded to an initial e-mail and then participated in a session on effective e-mail communication. Responses to a final e-mail were assessed using a rubric with subscores for medical knowledge, communication, and professionalism. RESULTS: Performance improved from the first to final e-mail response in the overall score and in each subscore. Improvement was sustained over the course of the academic year. Interrater reliability revealed good agreement. CONCLUSIONS: Communicating effectively with patients via e-mail is not intuitive but can be taught. It is feasible to introduce responses to a simulated e-mail case in a clinical clerkship as an assessment tool.