OBJECTIVE:
To reveal the perceptions, expertise and practices of multi-professional teams providing palliative care to children in a paediatric oncology unit. The research questions were based on everyday care, facilitations and difficulties, essential aspects of professional approaches, and the inter-disciplinary focus of care for children in palliative care and their families.
METHOD:
Qualitative, exploratory and descriptive research. Data were collected from June to October 2013 from nine professional multidisciplinary team members by means of a semi-structured interview submitted to thematic analysis.
RESULTS:
The following four themes emerged from analysis: palliative care: conceptions of the multi-professional team; the construction of singular care; the facilitations and difficulties experienced by the team and significant lessons learned.
CONCLUSIONS:
The subjects revealed that the team also suffers with the death of a child and, like the family, moves toward the construction of coping mechanisms for the elaboration of mourning. Paradoxically, the team shares knowledge to determine the foundations of a singular therapeutic project and inserts the family in this process so that it can be the protagonist of the child's care.
Palliative care; Oncology; Paediatrics; Patient care team