Children’s Palliative Nursing Care

Nursing is an essential component of children’s palliative care and palliative care is an essential aspect of nursing. Yet the complex inter-disciplinary nature of palliative care brings into sharp focus the work nurses undertake with others in delivering palliative care. This is, however, a book by nurses for nurses.

This comprehensive text presents the essential knowledge and skills required by nurses providing this invaluable care to a growing number of children. The chapters are mapped to the Children’s Palliative Care Education and Training standards. These are endorsed by the International Children’s Palliative Care Network, a major partner with the World Health Organization in the push to make children’s palliative care a universal health right. In its three Parts, Children’s Palliative Nursing Care covers public and universal care, core nursing and specialist care. The chapters can be read individually or cumulatively to move from engagement in public health and public understanding of palliative care through to delivering nursing care. Topics range from managing symptoms and end-of-life care, to education, research and issues of quality and leadership.

Uniquely each chapter has been written by a team of authors who come from both high-income and low-/middle-income countries. This makes this not just a book by nurses for nurses but a global book for global nursing practice.

Dr Duncan Randall has over twenty years of experience in delivering, researching and teaching children’s palliative nursing. He has worked on projects such as the Spectrum of Children’s Palliative Care, the Involve to Evolve database project, founding the first data group on children’s palliative care in the UK. He has also worked extensively with the Children’s Palliative Care Education and Training Action Group (CPCET) on the Standards for Education and the Standards for Advanced Care Planning. Duncan has an extensive publication history including his theoretical work using Pragmatics to set out a theory of children’s nursing for children and their childhoods.

Dr Sue Nilson has over thirty years’ experience in children’s palliative nursing care, research and teaching. She is a qualitative methodologist and supervises research students. Sue teaches across undergraduate and post-graduate programmes and also leads interprofessional palliative care workshops. Her recent work focuses on education, working with the Children’s Palliative Care Education and Training Action Group and Young Person’s Advance Care Plan Collaborative on the Education Standard Framework and Standard Framework for Advanced Care Planning. Sue’s current work is focused on the use of drama in teaching communication around end of life.

Professor Julia Downing is an experienced palliative care nurse, educationalist and researcher. She is the Chief Executive of the International Children’s Palliative Care Network (ICPCN) and Professor at universities in Uganda, Serbia and the UK. She has extensive experience in Global palliative care, research and education, and is on the editorial board of eCancer, APM and the IJPN. She has worked within palliative care for more than 30 years, with more than twenty of those working internationally in Uganda, Africa, Eastern Europe and globally. She serves on the boards of several international organisations, is regularly invited to speak at conferences and has an extensive publication history on global palliative care and nursing.