Deborah Lafond

Deborah Lafond

Discipline: Nurse Practitioner
Funding awarded to: Children’s National Health System, Washington, D.C.

Developing Confidence in Caring for Children with Life-Threatening Illness: The PANDA Cubs Palliative Care Resource Team

This project seeks to evaluate an evidence-based innovative model of care aimed at increasing access to palliative care services and continuity across the spectrum of care. Building off of the well-established End of Life Nursing Education Consortium Pediatric Palliative Care (ELNEC-PPC) training, a 12-month intensive educational program targets front line clinicians from all disciplines to develop confidence in providing primary palliative care for pediatric patients with life-threatening conditions, with specialized tertiary palliative care provided by the formal palliative care team. Primary palliative care is operationally defined as the care provided by the bedside clinician that addresses the physical, emotional, spiritual, cultural and environmental needs of children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. Tertiary palliative care is operationally defined as specialized care provided by trained and specialty board-certified palliative care clinicians addressing advanced symptom distress.

I am passionate about training the next generation of pediatric palliative care clinicians, from all disciplines. A palliative care team cannot rest on the expertise of one or two clinicians. A team approach with our medical and psychosocial colleagues is mandatory for excellence. I have developed a collaborative model of palliative care, which can be actualized with dedicated time to pursue leadership and implementation of this model.