Palliative care for pediatric intensive care patients and families

This article reviews current evidence and best practices for integrating palliative care into the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), with a focus on surgical patients. Recent findings Palliative care is best integrated in a tiered approach, with primary palliative care provided by the PICU and surgical providers for all patients and families, including basic symptom management, high-quality communication, and end-of-life care. Secondary and tertiary levels of care involve unit or team-based ‘champions’ with additional expertise, and subspecialty palliative care teams, respectively. PICU and surgical providers should be able to provide primary palliative care, to identify patients and families for whom a palliative care consult would be helpful, and should be comfortable introducing the concept of palliative care to families. Summary This review provides a framework and tools to enable PICU and surgical providers to integrate palliative care best practices into patient and family care.
Source: Current Opinion in Pediatrics - Category: Pediatrics Tags: SURGERY: Edited by Nikunj K. Chokshi Source Type: research