The following is a summary of “Palliative Care Needs Assessment for Pediatric Complex Care Providers,” published in the February 2023 issue of Pain Management by DiDomizio, et al.

Pediatric teams that specialize in both complicated care and palliative care frequently provided treatment for children with complex medical complexity (CMC). The connection between the two fields had not been the subject of previous studies. For a study, researchers sought to examine the difficulties complex care programs have in providing for children with complex medical needs (CMC) and to see whether any of these difficulties may be resolved by working with pediatric palliative care or providing more training for complex care teams.

An online anonymous survey was sent to medical professionals who defined themselves as offering clinical treatment to kids with severe medical conditions. A Complex Care listerv was used to find the subjects. Utilizing descriptive statistics, data were examined.

About 85 people took the poll; 74 of them (87.1%) were doctors, and 11 (12.0%) were nurse practitioners. The treatment of symptoms, setting of care objectives, advance care planning, and coordination of care was among the difficulties that subjects described when caring for CMC. In each topic area, the majority of participants said they had benefited from palliative care consultation help. The majority of participants regarded their collaboration with palliative care as a close one with lots of overlap.

A wide range of difficulties was linked to caring for CMC as pediatric complicated care develops. Numerous of these difficulties include areas of skill where palliative care professionals get focused training. Given the knowledge, palliative providers may provide to the community and the complexity of complex care, the research implied that increasing palliative care engagement in the CMC population can improve complex care teams and patients.

Reference: jpsmjournal.com/article/S0885-3924(22)00965-4/fulltext