Nurse and communication with terminal pediatric patients and their families

Abstract

Although childhood and teenagers’ times are usually synonymous with happiness in today’s society, the emergence of some illnesses is quite normal and so the death of children and teenagers is a sad fact. However, in recent years, the lifespan of incurable children and teenagers has grown and consequently palliative pediatric care has become increasingly more widespread. During that care, communication becomes an important element among many other things. Communication is a field that requires effort, care and ability and although it is often related to informing, it is a process that goes beyond communication.The aim of this project is to describe the communication that a nurse needs to have with terminal pediatric patients and their families.Narrative literature review, based on key words and different descriptors, has been made by carrying out data based research in Biblioteca Virtual de la Salud (BVS), PubMed, Medes and Dialnet. Besides, many websites and books as well as second level research have been consulted. The importance of appropriate communication and its place have been presented. Apart from that, communication techniques that health professionals have to develop with terminally ill children and teenagers have been analysed. Next, what you need to take into consideration when holding an interview about death has been explained. Finally, communication between family and health professionals has been described. As a consequence, it should be mentioned that even though communication is an essential instrument in terminal pediatric care, several shortcomings still exist in practice.