Introduction: Pediatric palliative care is an active and comprehensive approach to the care of children with life-threatening conditions and their families, from the moment of identification or diagnosis of the disease, throughout the illness, at the time of death and beyond. Purpose: The aim of the diploma thesis is to present the palliative care of a child and the role of a nurse in the care of a dying child. Methods: The descriptive method was used to review and analyze the professional and scientific literature on the role of a nurse in the palliative care of a child. The search was conducted in the databases of the Digital Library of the University of Ljubljana (DiKUL), Medline/PubMed, Google Scholar and CINAHL. The period covered by the literature review was from January 2023 to May 2023. All online articles were freely available or could be accessed via the University of Ljubljana's remote access. Results: The results are shown in two tables, one comparing nurses' knowledge of pediatric palliative care and the other the most common symptoms and the nurse's role in alleviating them. Nurses indicate that they do not have enough knowledge about pediatric palliative care, but they have a desire for further training. The most common symptom reported in the surveys is pain. Other common symptoms are: dyspnea, anxiety, nausea and vomiting, neurological symptoms, irritability and drowsiness. Nurses consider it most important to relieve symptoms, especially pain. Discussion and conclusion: Comparing Slovenia with other countries, we found that pediatric palliative care is still a very unexplored field, without uniform standards or guidelines and largely based on adult palliative care. However, in recent years, the field has been developing, with the establishment of multidisciplinary teams trained in pediatric palliative care. Although it is underdefined, its importance and impact not only on the sick child but also on the family and health professionals should not be underestimated. Through various recent studies, we are gaining an insight into the actual situation, which enables us to start thinking critically about how to improve pediatric palliative care.
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