Pediatric Palliative Care Revisited: A Vision to Add Life

The concept of pediatric palliative care should be analyzed to gain a better understanding of how to address the needs of children living with life-threatening illnesses. According to Walker and Avant, this article identifies uses of the concept, defines its critical attributes, describes a model case, describes additional cases, and identifies antecedents, consequences, and empirical referents. The analysis is useful to researchers and clinicians with a focus on pediatric palliative care. Hypotheses can then accurately reflect relationships among variables in the field, and new tools can be developed to determine the presence of pediatric palliative care.