Lorna Fraser wins NIHR funding to research the development of a clinical scoring system
Posted on 17 February 2014
Growing numbers of children in England are suffering with medical conditions that will shorten their lives (life-limiting conditions (LLCs)). Many of these children have repeated hospital admissions, some require intensive care treatment, and many of these children will die in paediatric intensive care (PICU). Admission to hospital, and especially paediatric intensive care, has many implications for the child and family, including emotional, practical and financial aspects, as well as resource use for the NHS.
For some of these critically ill children, admission to PICU is not in the child’s best interest, and they may be better cared for by other services, for example paediatric palliative care services. If these children could be identified, it would enable better clinical decision making, informed choice for the families and may make more efficient use of services in the NHS. Enabling families a greater choice in the place of care or place of death for their child may enable the ‘good death’ that they hope for and may also help the family’s longer term adjustment to the death.
This project will use routinely collected data to describe what happens to children with LLCs admitted to paediatric intensive care, and develop a scoring system which may help identify those children who would benefit from PICU and those who may receive more appropriate palliative care in a different healthcare setting. For more information on the project, please click here.