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Palliative Care

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Palliative Care
Jennifer Cashon
McKendree University

This article explores the concept and role of hope in children’s palliative care, the ethical and legal issues that affect the reality of giving hope to families and the implications for practice. The death of a child in Western society is an unnatural event that no parent ever expects to experience. The best children’s palliative care is defined as an active and total approach to care, from the point of diagnosis or recognition, throughout the child’s life, death and beyond. It embraces physical, emotional, social and spiritual elements, and focuses on the enhancement of quality of life for the child and support for the family. The articles discusses how hope is essential for the families and that there is a strong link between hope and quality of life. Hope is considered an effective coping strategy in dealing with serious illness. Also, the way in which staff communicate with families will undoubtedly affect whether they allow the preservation of hope. A questionnaire was administered to nurses and doctors about what they perceived as barriers when introducing the idea of palliative care for children to families. The most common obstacle identified was uncertain prognosis. The second most common barrier was that the family members were not ready to acknowledge that their child might have an incurable condition. The fact that parents may not be ready to acknowledge that their child has an incurable condition or is going to die should not detract from the healthcare worker’s duty to be as honest as possible. The research in this article has shown that parents feel it is important that they receive sensitive and caring communication including frank discussions to prepare them for the dying process. In conclusion of this article, hope is an important factor for parents facing the death of a child, and

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