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Projects

Linkedin

Linkedin: @JA Hope4Kids

Contact

Contact information: wp2@kinderpalliatief.nl

Partners

International Children’s Palliative Care Network (ICPCN)

ICPCN is a global network seeking to improve acces to children’s palliative care. ICPCN’s network includes members in more than 140 countries. Members have access to ICPCN’s newsletter and online resources including educational content in many languages. ICPCN advocates for access and quality of children’s palliative care with the World Health Organization and other global platforms.

ICPCN

European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC)

EAPC is a professional organization “committed to supporting the promotion and development of palliative care throughout Europe and beyond”. Our Center staff frequently attend and present at the EAPC annual conference. In addition they serve in leadership positions and support the administrative work of the EAPC Reference Group for Children and Young People. Our Director, Meggi Schuilling-Otten is currently Chair of the EAPC Reference Group for Children and Young People. This group serves to promote children’s palliative care throughout Europe.

European Association for Palliative Care

Maruzza Foundation

The Maruzza Foundation works to ensure the right to access palliative care for all children who need it. The Maruzza Foundation hosts the Maruzza International Congress in Rome, a major gathering for paediatric palliative care researchers and clinicians.

Maruzza Foundation

Resources

Courageous Parents Network

CPN aims to orient, equip and empower families and others caring for a child with a serious medical condition and provide digital resources and an extensive media library used by families and clinicians.

Center to Advance Palliative Care

The Center to Advance Palliative Care is a US based organization that has supported the growth of palliative care as a specialty clinical service since 1999. Their website offers free resources on pediatric program development, marketing of palliative care, and educational offerings for operations managers and clinicians. Program Development. 

Center to Advance Palliative Care

Childhood Cancer International

CCI is the largest childhood cancer patient support organization, with member organizations in more than 100 countries.

Childhood Cancer International

Together for Short Lives (TFSL)

TFSL is a UK based organization that provides family support (emotional and financial), advocates for children’s palliative care in the UK, and providers resources to clinicians working with children who have life-limiting illnesses. TFSL also hosts an online provider network where clinicians can share expertise with one another.

Research Resources

International News

Components of Perinatal Palliative Care: An Integrative Review

The systematic review primarily led to the development of an extensive list of care components.


The End of Life Care Research group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University (Belgium) performed an integrative review of perinatal palliative care components in 2022.

Perinatal palliative care is an emerging field of multidisciplinary care provided when a severe diagnosis is made either before or shortly after birth aimed to improve the quality of life of patients and their families through prevention and relief of symptoms, whether physical, psychological, social or spiritual. As new programs are being developed internationally to provide such care, the possible beneficial impact is often hypothesized but has not yet been extensively evaluated. Additionally, components mentioned in existing perinatal palliative care programs seem to show a large variation without insight into the outcomes or effect evaluation of each provided component. We therefore aimed to perform an integrative review of relevant literature to provide an overview of the outcome and effectiveness evaluation of perinatal palliative care compared to regular care provided, and to detail which working components are incorporated in such perinatal palliative care.

The systematic search was conducted in MEDLINE, Embase, CENTRAL, CINAHL, PsychInfo and Web of Science. We identified a total of 21,893 records, resulting in 69 publications that met inclusion criteria after rigorous title, abstract and full text screening. Twelve publications (17,4%) discussed the effect of a PPC program. Other publications concerned the description of PPC programs, most often by means of a program description (22/69; 31.9%), guidelines (14/769; 20.3%) or case study (10/69; 14.5%). Outcome measures envisioned four main target categories: care coordination, parents and family members, care for the fetus/neonate, and healthcare providers. No trials exist to date.

An extensive list of care components
The systematic review primarily led to the development of an extensive list of care components that could possibly be included in perinatal palliative care programs, which can be used as a checklist for developing future perinatal palliative care initiatives worldwide. Every component is described in detail and can thus be adapted to fit specific needs of the setting, hospital or country wherein the newly developed program would be situated. However, another main message of this review is that evidence of outcomes and effectiveness of the individual components, or of perinatal palliative care programs as a whole is scarce. We can thus provide an extensive checklist on components that could be included in future initiatives, yet we can provide no insights into what actually contributes to better care. More research is needed to identify which care components are actually effective in providing better perinatal palliative care, and what should be envisioned as the main outcome measure of future randomized controlled trials on perinatal palliative care.


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