Palliative Care
Program Type: Inpatient
Palliative care is the care we provide to a child or young adult who is experiencing a life-limiting illness. We provide a supportive environment that focuses on better quality of life, family support, pain and symptom management, all while respecting your beliefs, values and priorities.
We provide palliative care together with The HSC Butterfly Team, a team of professionals who work together with the child, family and care team to make sure your child and family have the best quality of life possible during a very difficult time. We make every effort to provide a private and comfortable surrounding that is sensitive to your family.
We respect your wishes during the illness, and at the end of life, when death occurs. We are also here to support you during the grieving and mourning process.
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Our goal is to make your child as comfortable as possible and to have the best quality of life possible. We do that by providing your child with:
- Pain and symptom management
- Care planning and goal setting
- Religious and spiritual support
- Opportunities to create memories
- Support for sisters and brothers
- Coordinated care with primary care providers
- Grief and bereavement services
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Palliative care helps strengthen your child’s body, mind and spirit when they experience symptoms that come with a serious illness. Easing these symptoms:
- Helps provide the best possible quality of life for your child
- Makes your child better able to handle medical treatments
- Helps family members cope with the feelings and emotions of having a sick child
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- Constipation
- Fear, anxiety, stress
- Loss of appetite
- Nausea and vomiting
- Pain
- Problems with sleep
- Shortness of breath
- Tiredness
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The HSC Butterfly Team is a group of professional experts in pediatric palliative care. Members work together with the child, family, and their unit-based care team to make sure that the child and family have the best quality of life possible. This includes making every effort to provide surroundings that create a climate of sensitivity, privacy and comfort for the child and family.
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- Care planning and goal setting
- Collaboration with primary providers
- Grief and bereavement services
- Integrative therapies
- Memory and legacy making
- Pain and symptom management
- Spiritual and emotional support
- Support for the whole family including siblings
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To provide active and holistic care for children and young people and their families experiencing a life-limiting illness in a supportive environment that focuses on enhancement of quality of life,family support, and management of distressing symptoms while respecting their beliefs, values, and priorities.
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This is a program for children who are already patients at The HSC Pediatric Center. To learn more about this inpatient program, please call our admission office at 202-635-6115, or visit our how to get services page.
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