Testing a Pediatric Palliative Care Education Workplace Intervention

Abstract

Pediatric palliative care is aimed at pain and symptom management, reducing hospitalization, promoting psychosocial care, and improving quality of life for children with serious illness. As a professional caregiver, nurses play an essential role in the provision of appropriate pediatric palliative care in clinical care settings. The purpose of this quality improvement study was to improve pediatric nurses’ awareness and perceptions of palliative care. A 1-group pretest-posttest design was used in the study. A 20-minute education video was used as an intervention to enhance nurses’ awareness and perception about pediatric palliative care. Twenty-one pediatric medical-surgical nurses participated in the intervention. Posttest results indicated raised awareness about palliative care, more nurses were able to define palliative care correctly, and nurses were more likely to encourage a palliative care consult. Future studies are needed using larger sample sizes with robust measures to further evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention on enhancing pediatric palliative care awareness among nurses. Copyright © 2022 by The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association. All rights reserved.