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Training health professionals in caring for dying children and grieving families
1Faculty of Nursing, University of Athens, Greece.
Insights
Training health professionals for pediatric hospice care is crucial. This involves addressing unique challenges in educating staff to support terminally ill children and their grieving families effectively.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Palliative Care
- Healthcare Professional Education
- Childhood Oncology
Background:
- Child death is rare but increasing in industrialized nations, often occurring after complex medical care.
- Healthcare professionals lack adequate training for pediatric end-of-life care, facing unique patient and personal challenges.
- Existing adult palliative care training is insufficient for the distinct needs of terminally ill children and their families.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify and discuss challenges in training healthcare professionals for pediatric end-of-life services.
- To highlight the necessity of specialized training for supporting dying children and grieving families.
Main Methods:
- Discussion of key training challenges: educational objectives, teaching methods, emotional involvement, participant support, interdisciplinary collaboration, evaluation, and educator qualifications.
- Reference to a 600-hour training program in home-based palliative care for children with cancer at the University of Athens as an illustrative example.
Main Results:
- Identified seven critical challenges in developing and implementing effective pediatric palliative care training programs.
- Demonstrated practical application of addressing these challenges through a comprehensive training initiative.
Conclusions:
- Specialized, differentiated training is essential for healthcare professionals providing care to terminally ill children.
- Addressing identified challenges can improve the quality of care and support for pediatric patients and their families.
Abstract:
In most industrialized countries today, the death of a child is a rare phenomenon. When it occurs, however, it is usually within a hospital setting, after the child has received complex and often long-term medical care aimed at curing or controlling a serious disease. Thus, health professionals are increasingly exposed to the dying process and death of a child with little prior education to help them deal with the particular needs of young patients and minimal preparation in recognizing and handling their personal reactions in the face of death. Comprehensive training programs in pediatric hospice care could help professionals cope with the growing and unique needs of terminally ill children and of their families but these should be differentiated from training programs designed for the terminal care of adult patients. The purpose of this article is to describe and discuss some of the challenges involved in the training of health professionals (pediatricians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, clergy) who wish to provide services to dying children and grieving families. These challenges include (a) definition of educational objectives, (b) selection of teaching methods and content of training, (c) definition and teaching of emotional involvement, (d) support of training participants, (e) promotion of interdisciplinary collaboration, (f) evaluation of the training process and its outcomes, and (g) background and skills of educators. The challenges are discussed and references are made to illustrate how they were met by a 600-hour training program on home-based palliative care for children dying of cancer conducted at the University of Athens.