Reflection on Spirituality in Pediatric Palliative care

Palliative care in pediatric settings supports patients diagnosed with a life-limiting condition and their families, improving and maintaining the best possible quality of life. This may be achieved through effective symptom management as well as attending to children’s and families’ emotional and spiritual concerns. According The World Health Organization and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), spirituality has recognized as a care domain and a child’s right, and consequently it have to be a defining professional obligation. What do we know about spirituality in pediatric palliative care? We review literature published in the last twenty years and indexed in PubMed, PsycInfo, Scopus and EBSCO Psychological and Behavioural Sciences Collection database. Most of the included studies concerned children (above all preadolescents) and their parents as participants; few studies considered the point of view of health and social care professionals regarding how spirituality impacts on patients and their families. Almost half of the researches are realized in USA; all studies are qualitative with only two exceptions, in which a tool to measure the children’s need of spirituality is used. A comprehensive literature searches dated 2012 was realized to explore and review how culture and religion informs and shapes pediatric palliative care; in this case, “spirituality” is a keyword as well as “religion”. Most of studies highlighted spirituality as a source of comfort and hope for children and their parents, as well as an important factor in the search for the meaning of illness and dying, and for parental decision making in the end-of-life care of their children. A number of important area of exploration for future studies emerged.