Comparison of End-of-Life Care Practices Between Children With Complex Chronic Conditions and Neonates Dying in an ICU Versus Non-ICUs: A Substudy of the Pediatric End-of-LIfe CAre Needs in Switzerland (PELICAN) Project.

Objectives: To describe and compare characteristics of care provided at the end of life for children with chronic complex conditions and neonates who died in an ICU with those who died outside an ICU.

Design: Substudy of a nation-wide retrospective chart review.

Setting: Thirteen hospitals, including 14 pediatric and neonatal ICUs, two long-term institutions, and 10 community-based organizations in the three language regions of Switzerland.

Intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of a medical record abstraction study on transition of care after childhood cancer.

Background: The abstraction of data from medical records is a widespread practice in epidemiological research. However, studies using this means of data collection rarely report reliability. Within the Transition after Childhood Cancer Study (TaCC) which is based on a medical record abstraction, we conducted a second independent abstraction of data with the aim to assess a) intra-rater reliability of one rater at two time points; b) the possible learning effects between these two time points compared to a gold-standard; and c) inter-rater reliability.