Evaluation and Quality of Care Issues

This chapter presents the recent developments in defining and evaluating the quality of children's palliative care. The large variety of medical conditions, ages, care settings and pathways for children in palliative care makes it difficult to reach consensus, and consequently standards, for quality indicators used for evaluating the outcomes of children's palliative care. The fit that the Institute of Medicine quality issues might have with children's palliative care is discussed and the current literature on quality measurement is explored. Research on outcome measurement is rapidly increasing to improve quality of care and accreditations, despite the conceptual, methodological and ethical complexity of evaluating palliative care and its outcomes. Based on the latest scientific evidence, readers will gain insights into the importance of implementing quality processes in children's palliative care.