PediPal – Details, episodes & analysis

"About suffering they were never wrong, / the old Masters: how well they understood / Its human position..." wrote W.H. Auden. For all that suffering seems to be central to our practice, how do we in pediatric palliative care actually stack up against Brueghel et al when it comes to understanding it, though? Dan and Sarah dig deep with guests Erica Salter, PhD, and Lauren Draper, MD to explore what suffering really means for children, families, and the clinicians who care for them.

Even before heading homeward from the Annual Assembly, Dan and Sarah decided that we needed to do an episode about one of our favorite presentations, palliative home transports. So in this interview, Ashley Autrey from Children's Hospital New Orleans and Lindsay Ragsdale from Kentucky Children's Hospital bring it on home to you, our audience, sharing their wisdom and expertise about how to get some of our most complex and fragile patients out of the hospital, and what it means to honor death location preference.

This episode also features some exciting new AI integrations because... why not, right, I mean everything else has AI in it now, so... Will Sarah and Dan be replaced by robots? Have the robots learned anything about palliative care? Tune in to find out!


Materials
The Children's Hospital New Orleans home transport checklist, courtesy of Dr. Autrey

Interdisciplinary teams are so vital to the practice of palliative care, and in today's episode, the PediPal team explores a new kind of team member: What has four paws, has mastered the art of being present, and is guaranteed to increase the popularity of your palliative care team? A therapy dog!

Join Sarah and Dan as they hear two tales of wagging tails who are dedicated members of Peds Palliative teams in British Columbia (Gaia) and Michigan (Fawn). We hear mostly from the humans who work closely with them, but if you listen extra carefully, you can almost hear the empathetic panting in the background...

P.S. Pictures are worth a thousand "awws," so we strongly suggest you click on those bio links above as you listen.

Get psyched because PediPal is back! In this episode, Sarah and Dan interview two psychologists, Amanda Thompson and Rachel Kentor, about creating competencies for pediatric palliative psychology and how we can bring more psychology into the world of pediatric palliative care.

You can read their recent paper here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37141582/

And if you're interested in contacting them for more information about how to involve psychology in your pediatric palliative care practice, our guests have graciously shared their contact information:

• Amanda.Thompson AT inova DOT org
• rxkentor AT texaschildrens DOT org

If you're working in pediatric palliative care and you haven't heard of Courageous Parents Network, put down this podcast immediately and go make yourself familiar with the amazing resource that is CPN. Sarah and Dan are thrilled to have three courageous parents - Blyth Lord, Amy Graver, and Liz Morris - discuss how their children's stories intersected with palliative care.

And if you haven't heard the CPN podcast, make sure to check it out here: https://courageousparentsnetwork.org/podcasts/ 

Welcome to a special "Best of" PediPal episode! The notion, concept, and implementation of silence is integral to the practice of pediatric palliative care. Perhaps even more important than what we say is what we don't say, and how we don't say it, and when it isn't said. Join Sarah and Dan for an exploration of this truly golden feature of our specialty.

"Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue." Proverbs 17:28

A social worker, a nurse practitioner, and three physicians walk into a podcast... There's no punchline, just the latest episode of PediPal, where Dan and Sarah interview three of the interprofessional fellows from the Boston Children's interprofessional fellowship program--Jennifer Donovan, Amy Porter, and Thomas Haire--and challenge ourselves to say the word "interprofessional" as many times as possible. We also include some clips from past episodes that resonate with the themes from the interview, so listen up for some old familiar voices from PediPal history.

How do you talk to a child about illness and death? For a field that deals with these challenging topics every day, we don't always feel comfortable helping our young patients and their families engage with them.  For guidance, Dan and Sarah turn to Elena Lister (@elenalistermd1) and Michael Schwartzman (@schwartzmanma), authors of Giving Hope: Conversations with Children About Illness, Death, and Loss.


Links to buy Giving Hope here at Indie Bound and Penguin Random House; available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.

The holiday season is ending and boy are we stuffed... with educational and entertaining content about one of pediatric palliative care's more misunderstood and controversial topics: overfeeding. Sarah and Dan round out 2022 talking with skeletal dysplasia expert Ricki Carroll (@RickiCarroll), hospice guru Glen Komatsu, and the inimitable Julie Hauer about those times when our patients are getting too much nutrition and all the problems that can cause. 

Does practicing pediatric palliation promote positive parenting? Does parenthood put palliative practitioners in a preferable position? Dan and Sarah partner up to ponder these profound puzzles and palaver with Jessica Casas and Daniel Mahoney (@DanielMahoneyMD),  and Claire Crawford (@PalliativClaire), all from the Pediatric Advanced Care Team at Texas Children's Hospital.

(CN: This episode deals with the topic of pregnancy loss.)