20 March 2024
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The outcome of the PalliPed Project mapping the situation of dedicated paediatric palliative care (PPC) services in Italy has been published in the Italian Journal of Pediatrics (IJP). The independent study, carried out with the support of the Maruzza Foundation, investigates, for the first time in Italy, the distribution and quality of dedicated PPC services in all of the Italian regions.
The objective of the project, lead by Professor Franca Benini, Director of the Veneto Regional Centre for Paediatric Palliative Care and Pain Management and involving a ‘Palliped’ working group of over 50 healthcare professionals delivering PPC throughout Italy, is to provide political decision makers with the latest data regarding dedicated care services for babies, children and young adults diagnosed with serious and incurable illness and their families thus permitting them to develop policies, care models and assign resources based on the scientific evidence.
The article on the IJP provides a comprehensive and current overview of specialist PPC services in Italy indicating the type of structure, care team configuration and specialised services available in the 19 dedicated PPC centres mapped. The project results highlight the need to provide specific PPC training initiatives for healthcare professionals, to enhance PPC awareness and to realise research interventions aimed at better distributing the available resources and defining strategies capable of effectively addressing the multidisciplinary and complex needs of this growing population of particularly vulnerable patients.