Team-based approach to paediatric palliative care

American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Children with, 2005

Caring for children with a life-limiting illness often requires input from a multidisciplinary team, including medical, nursing, allied health and pastoral care professionals, and volunteers. Allied healthcare professionals play a particularly important role in paediatric palliative care, providing services (such as social work, psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, pharmacy, nutrition, speech pathology and music, art or play therapy). These services can improve the child’s quality of life by assisting with symptom management and developmental support, and help to normalise the child’s experience as much as possible.

Some children require more than one service or agency to be involved in their care. Multi-agency support can be complicated, and requires clear definition of roles and good communication and collaboration between teams. For example, in regional and rural areas, there may be a team of healthcare professionals based in close geographic proximity to the family, in addition to a team at a tertiary children’s hospital located in a capital city or major centre (which is usually specialty-based). Coordination and collaboration can be maintained by good clinical handover, often using telehealth.

For more information about the people involved in providing palliative care, see Who provides palliative care?.