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[Palliative care in paediatric oncology: perceptions, expertise and practices from the perspective of the
Adriana Ferreira da Silva1, Helena Becker Issi2, Maria da Graça Corso da Motta3
1Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Insights
Palliative care teams in pediatric oncology experience grief and develop coping mechanisms, similar to families. They share knowledge to create individualized care plans, empowering families as central to a child
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Oncology
- Palliative Care
- Multidisciplinary Healthcare
Context:
- Paediatric oncology units face unique challenges in providing end-of-life care.
- Multidisciplinary teams are integral to delivering comprehensive palliative care.
- Understanding team dynamics is crucial for optimizing care for children with cancer.
Purpose:
- To explore the perceptions, expertise, and practices of multidisciplinary teams in pediatric palliative care.
- To identify facilitators and challenges in delivering specialized care to children with cancer.
- To understand the inter-disciplinary approach to palliative care for pediatric oncology patients and their families.
Summary:
- Qualitative research involving semi-structured interviews with nine multidisciplinary team members.
- Thematic analysis revealed four key themes: team conceptions of palliative care, individualized care construction, experienced challenges, and lessons learned.
- Findings highlight that teams, like families, grieve child deaths and develop coping strategies.
Impact:
- The study underscores the emotional impact of child death on healthcare professionals.
- It emphasizes the importance of shared knowledge in developing personalized therapeutic plans.
- Empowering families as protagonists in their child's care is a key outcome, fostering a collaborative approach.
Objective:
To reveal the perceptions, expertise and practices of multi-professional teams providing palliative care to children in a paediatric oncology unit. The research questions were based on everyday care, facilitations and difficulties, essential aspects of professional approaches, and the inter-disciplinary focus of care for children in palliative care and their families.
Method:
Qualitative, exploratory and descriptive research. Data were collected from June to October 2013 from nine professional multidisciplinary team members by means of a semi-structured interview submitted to thematic analysis.
Results:
The following four themes emerged from analysis: palliative care: conceptions of the multi-professional team; the construction of singular care; the facilitations and difficulties experienced by the team and significant lessons learned.
Conclusions:
The subjects revealed that the team also suffers with the death of a child and, like the family, moves toward the construction of coping mechanisms for the elaboration of mourning. Paradoxically, the team shares knowledge to determine the foundations of a singular therapeutic project and inserts the family in this process so that it can be the protagonist of the child's care.
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