Dignity is a concept that I feel many people, both healthcare professionals and patients, strive to achieve; however, due to multifactorial reasons, does not always materialise.
As healthcare professionals we often tend to following the medical model and therefore place the ‘condition’ above the ‘person’, with the hope to ‘cure’ or alleviate symptoms that may be causing pain to the person. Often, this is done in conjunction with concealing diagnosis and/or prognosis from the child, so as to ‘protect’ them.
I therefore found it very interesting to read about psychological distress within the Dignity Model for Dying Children (Cai et al., 2023). It was interesting to explore the impact of medical uncertainty, death anxiety and stigma from parents’ and childrens’ perspectives, as well as the impact of this on their dignity.
For me, this further emphasises the importance of working within a multi-/interdisciplinary team, to ensure that paediatric patients are treated holistically and that dignity is preserved from onset of treatment, until death.
