Palliative care, resuscitation status, and end-of-life considerations in pediatric anesthesia.
- Introductory summary for those paediatric anaesthetists who may not conduct end-of-life conversations routinely but does not really provide a practical framework.
- WHO defines palliative care as an approach that “improves quality of life of patients and their families facing a life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering”. It further states that for children, palliative care should begin when a serious illness is diagnosed.
- Domains of interdisciplinary paediatric palliative care:
- Goals of care
- Advanced care planning
- Pain and symptom management
- Care coordination
- End of life assessment and management
- Shared-decision making (SDM) is the cornerstone of palliative care.
- Communication around serious illness should be treated as a procedure that can be deconstructed into its parts, taught, and rehearsed.
Reviewed by Dr. Philip Cheung
