Patients' and Parents' Needs, Attitudes, and Perceptions About Early Palliative Care Integration in Pediatric Oncology.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Early palliative care integration for cancer patients is now touted as the optimal care model, yet significant barriers often prevent its implementation. A perceived barrier, especially for pediatric oncology patients, is the notion that patients and their families may not need or want palliative care involvement early in the disease trajectory.

Objective

To determine the perception of symptom burden early in treatment and assess attitudes toward early integration of palliative care in pediatric oncology patient-parent pairs.

Design, setting, and participants

Novel but pretested survey tools were administered to 129 patient-parent dyads of hospital-based pediatric oncology ambulatory clinics and inpatient units between September 2011 and January 2015. All p

SUBMITTER: Levine DR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5824292 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature