Palliative Care for Children

Abstract

Children with life-threatening illnesses rarely benefit from palliative services. Because nurses spend more time with dying children than any other healthcare professional does, it is essential that they are prepared to address the complicated physical, psychological, legal, ethical, and spiritual issues associated with terminal illness and death. The authors discuss a course that provides students with the knowledge, skills, and attitude needed to provide comprehensive care for pediatric patients and their families.

Thanatology Students’ Attitudes When Facing Patients Death

“…A questionnaire validated by expert thanatologists was applied to be answered by all students, it was also reviewed by the lecturers of the course. This instrument included 7 items using a Likert type scale with frequent, infrequent and never choices, that considered the study variables, i.e., about different thanatology interventions on children, adolescents, adults and elders, which contemplate to favor empathy, intercommunication with patient and relatives, accompaniment, counseling, identification of death process, attitude of student about its own and relatives' death, the possible topic evasion, and patient and relatives' reactions [3,8,9]. The questionnaire was filled after students practiced giving thanatology intervention on patients at hospitals, assigned by the coordinator.…”

“…It would be expected that health professionals would have the theoretical knowledge and the skills training for these future experiences, regrettably this is not the case. There are some optional courses for students of health careers [4,5,6,7], but those that do not take the diplomat, loss the opportunity to have homogeneous scholar training for the graduate profile in the subject; then, regarding the labour field, when a person dies the harsh reality put to test all our values, knowledge, beliefs and emotions such that our strength may crumble surfacing pain, since the death of a person shows the reality of our own death and the fragility of life, such that these continuous events may overwhelm health professionals with negative emotions provoking somatization or evasion of the event [8,9]. The way death is seeing and interpreted, either as a general or other´s event, changes when it affects a specific person, most of all if a child is dying, and also the age of the sick detonates the death process differently, i.e., when the ill or his relatives confront the closeness of death [9,10,11]; then it is important that health professionals may identify their reactions and attitudes under these circumstances, and give themselves the chance to seek for help to fulfill training skills timely, even if it was not in their curriculum.…”

“…Thanatology education allows health professionals to provide support and get over all types of loss, to support the suffering and give thanatological counseling and crisis management to both, patient and relatives, and accompaniment to terminal ill patients helping them to have life quality in this difficult process [8,10]. Thanatological work is part of the accompaniment granted as soon as the person knows is sick, and his family consents to ensure his good death, helping person to accept own or other´s death [8,9,10].…”