What is pediatric palliative care?
Pediatric palliative care (PPC) is holistic, family-centered care directed at children with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions. Its main goal is to alleviate the multiple dimensions of patients’ and families’ suffering in order to improve their quality of life. Through impeccable evaluation, interdisciplinary treatment, constant communication, and conscientious planning, PPC helps healthcare professionals to offer care for the body, mind, and spirit of their patients. This medical specialty also focuses on supporting the professional care team and family. In short, PPC seeks to help improve the quality of life of children with special care needs, their families, and the professionals who care for them. Learn more about palliative care here.
MedPal–CNN is an educational tool oriented towards healthcare professionals who care for pediatric patients who have already been diagnosed with a condition that could benefit from PPC. The app is designed to help professionals learn more about PPC and to connect them to diverse resources to learn about management approaches for previously diagnosed conditions. This app is not a diagnostic or treatment tool.
The Care Guidelines section provides general information on PPC and management approaches for the symptoms and conditions commonly seen in PPC. The Care Guidelines section consists of two parts: the main menu and the content of the guides. Pressing any of the sections in the main menu opens a dialog that allows you to choose the guidelines about specific symptoms or conditions (within this dialog the content moves horizontally).
The Tools section links the user to evidence-based tools for evaluation, treatment, and education. The tools consist of three main components: a main menu, the list of tools per section, and the tool itself.