Pediatric Palliative Care and End-of-Life Treatment

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The Pediatric Palliative Care and End-of-Life Treatment course is designed to provide information to practitioners who treat pediatric patients in primary care with a subspecialty setting about palliative care for pediatric patients. The course content covers palliative care delivered by designated healthcare teams, primary palliative care delivery, end-of-life symptom treatment, and orders for life-sustaining therapies.

Learning Objectives: 

At the conclusion of this educational program, learners will be able to:

1. Describe the differences between primary and subspecialty palliative care and how they complement one another.
2. Describe the potential limitations of end-of-life decisions.
3. Review how to identify patient wishes related to comfort, support, and remembrance at the end-of-life by family and friends.
4. Identify routine health care interactions as an opportunity for long-term goals discussion.
5. Clarify the family’s understanding of the patient’s illness, identify worries and fears and discuss trade-offs between clinical choices including conditions that would be desirable or unacceptable. 
6. Conduct a complete pain assessment appropriate for the age of the child.
7. Describe the neurobiological mechanisms of normal pain perception.
8. Describe the clinical implications of the neurobiological mechanisms of pain perception for treating and preventing pain.
9. Design a pain treatment strategy for a child at the end-of-life.
10. Describe the different palliative care outcomes.
11. Identify concerns regarding current state of advance care planning (ACP) for children with life-threatening diseases.
12. Describe the barriers to the use of MOLST.

David Casavant, MD: Course Director/Author/Speaker

Associate in Perioperative Anesthesia, Pain Medicine and Critical Care Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital
Instructor of Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School

Richard Goldstein, MD: Author/Speaker

Program Director, Robert’s Program on Sudden Unexpected Death in Pediatrics, Boston Children’s Hospital
Attending Physician, Pediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT), Boston Children’s Hospital
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Emma Jones, MD: Author/Speaker

Attending Physician, Pediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT), Boston Children’s Hospital
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Amy Sanderson, MD: Author/Speaker

Assistant in Critical Care Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital
Instructor in Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School

Joanne Wolfe, MD, MPH: Author/Speaker

Chair of Pediatrics and Physician-in-Chief, MassGeneral for Children
Chair of Pediatrics, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

In support of improving patient care, Boston Children’s Hospital is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.

Nurse
Boston Children’s Hospital designates this activity for 3.5 contact hours for nurses. Nurses should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Pharmacy
This activity carries a maximum of 3.5 contact hours. Pharmacists should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Physician
Boston Children’s Hospital designates this live activity for a maximum of 3.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in this activity.

Risk Management
This activity meets the requirements for 3.50 Risk Management Credits as proscribed by the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine and defined in 243 CMR 2.06(5)(d) I. Please check your individual state licensing board requirements before claiming these credits.

Disclosures

Boston Children’s Hospital adheres to all ACCME Essential Areas, Standards, and Policies. It is Boston Children’s policy that those who have influenced the content of a CME activity (e.g. planners, faculty, authors, reviewers and others) disclose all relevant financial relationships with commercial entities so that Boston Children’s may identify and resolve any conflicts of interest prior to the activity. These disclosures will be provided in the activity materials along with disclosure of any commercial support received for the activity. Additionally, faculty members have been instructed to disclose any limitations of data and unlabeled or investigational uses of products during their presentations.

The following planners, speakers, and content reviewers, on behalf of themselves, have reported the following relevant financial relationships with any entity producing, marketing, reselling, or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on patients: 

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