Development of pediatric palliative care globally

Abstract

Palliative care improves the quality of life of patients living with life- threatening condition or life-limiting condition and families. With the growth of children with serious illness, need for palliative care around the world has increased tremendously, particularly in developing countries, where resources are limited. However, the development of pediatric palliative care has come with challenges that have hindered access to pediatric palliative care. This study explores development of pediatric palliative care globally and the challenges faced during the implementation of pediatric palliative care into healthcare system globally. Two research questions posed were: 1) How can Pediatric Palliative Care be developed globally? 2) What are the challenges to development of Pediatric Palliative Care globally? A literature review of the study was conducted to investigate the research questions. The inclusion criteria was used during the selection of the 12 articles, which were found to be relevant to the research questions. The following databases were used to search for the articles: PubMed, CINAHL, EBSCO, ScienceDirect and in Google scholar. Articles with one of the following keywords: Development of Pediatric Palliative Care globally, Challenges/barriers to development of Pediatric Palliative Care, integration of pediatric palliative care and implementation of pediatric palliative care were included. Paterson and Zderad's Humanistic Nursing Theory (HNT) was used to explain the nursing practices applied during the nursing process for children with Life-threatening condition or Life-Limiting condition and their families during Palliative Care. The findings revealed that effective communication was the major key to development of Pediatric Palliative Care. Through effective communication, quality of life of children with serious illness at the end of life and their families improved physically, emotional and spiritually. In the contrary, ineffective communication hindered the provision of Pediatric palliative care, thus impairing the quality of life of children with serious illness and their families.