Basic Symptom Control in Paediatric Palliative Care – the Rainbows Children’s Hospice Guidelines, is a unique resource, bringing together all symptom management for babies, children and young people.
It provides doctors and nursing staff with an ‘one-stop’ reference tool for symptom management and children’s palliative care medicines, and offers an invaluable source of support for professionals working in this challenging area of medicine.
A-Z of symptoms
Developed and edited by Dr Satbir Singh Jassal, GP and Medical Director at Rainbows Children’s Hospice, it benefits from contributions and peer reviews from 29 leading paediatric and palliative care specialists.
Dr Satbir Singh Jassal explains that “Basic Symptom Control in Paediatric Palliative Care has been designed to provide both practical support and hands-on clinical information in the acute setting.”
The manual lists, quite literally, an A-Z of symptoms that could occur when caring for a child with palliative care needs, and how to approach them.
It also includes a comprehensive prescribing formulary, adapted from the Association of Paediatric Palliative Medicine’s master formulary (second edition), to support those prescribing in children’s palliative medicine.
‘The cornerstone of good palliative care’
Barbara Gelb, Together for Short Lives CEO said:
“Providing pain and symptom management is the cornerstone of good palliative care. Getting this right for babies, children and young people can be challenging and anxiety provoking, perhaps even more so for those general practitioners and paediatricians who may only encounter a small number of life-limited children throughout their working lives.
“This is the key clinical tool used by children’s palliative care doctors and nurses across the world and the only resource of its kind that provides comprehensive guidelines for treating a wide range of symptoms experienced by children with life-limiting or complex health conditions. Indeed this manual has earned the reputation of being the ‘industry bible’ for professionals working in the field.”
The new updated edition reflects the changes and developments in children’s palliative care, as well as addressing gaps in guidance on key topics.
There is a new chapter on end of life management – responding to the key concern of how to manage the final stages of a child’s life. There are also major rewrites to the pain and gastrostomy sections.
Basic Symptom Control in Paediatric Palliative Care can be downloaded for free on the Together for Short Lives website.
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