Bereavement during childhood impacts children's wellbeing and biopsychosocial development. Research examining impacts and outcomes of childhood bereavement and supportive interventions has highlighted a myriad of factors that influence children's unique, complex experiences of grief, necessitating a personalized, child-centred approach. Children's grief support is underpinned by well-established grief theories studied primarily in adult populations, and stage-based developmental theories that characterise child development as "normative" and universal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To explore whether training on the SICG-Peds© (Serious Illness Guide for Pediatrics) impacts a pediatric clinician's confidence and knowledge in participating and initiating/leading difficult conversations with families of children living with a serious illness.
Methods: Over 2 years, clinicians from BC and Ontario who care for children with serious illnesses attended training workshops on the SICG-Peds©. These workshops were evaluated using pre- and post-workshop questionnaires.
To assess current practice and provide a basis for a provincial template, clinicians at a Canadian pediatric hospice reviewed the literature surrounding pediatric advance care planning (pACP) documentation, process, and implementation for children/youth. The scoping review protocol was developed in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews, and was prospectively registered on the Open Science Framework. MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, the Web of Science Core Collection, and Google Scholar, as well as sources of unpublished studies and grey literature, were reviewed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To explore experiences of pediatric clinicians participating in a serious illness communication program (SICP) for advance care planning (ACP), examining how the SICP supports clinicians to improve their communication and the challenges of implementing new communication tools into clinical practice.
Methods: A qualitative description study using individual interviews with a diverse group of pediatric clinicians who participated in 2.5-hour SICP training workshops at pediatric tertiary hospitals.
The Serious Illness Conversation Guide program developed by Ariadne Labs, a Joint Center for Health Systems Innovation, includes a list of patient-centered questions designed to assist clinicians to gain a more thorough understanding of their patient's life in order to inform future care decisions. In July 2017, specialist pediatric palliative care clinicians at Canuck Place Children's Hospice (CPCH) (Vancouver, BC, Canada), adapted the original guide to use with parents of children with serious illness. This tool is referred to as the Serious Illness Conversation Guide-Peds (SICG-Peds).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Palliat Nurs
October 2009
To be truly comprehensive, palliative care for children must address more than pain control and symptom management. Holistic care also encompasses attention to the child's relationships, hopes, fears and wishes. Parents and caregivers of dying children are generally the primary decision-makers in the child's care and can find the transition from active, to palliative care, particularly difficult.
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