Innovations in Research with Medically Fragile Populations: Using Bulletin Board Focus Groups

A new group of medically fragile young adults are graduating from pediatric palliative care programs with limited expectations to live beyond early adulthood, and no comparable adult services to support their complex needs. Accessing this population is difficult because of the complexity of their conditions, the extensive personal and equipment supports that limit feasibility for travel, and divergent communication abilities. Therefore, we undertook a descriptive case study using an asynchronous modification of an online focus group, a bulletin board focus group (BBFG). The greatest strengths of the BBFG are the appeal of this methodology for young adults and the multi day focus group becomes both a community and an intervention. An important limitation of this method was participant follow through on discussion threads. This BBFG provided rich and varied types of data, and very positive participant experiences

Research Priorities in Pediatric Palliative Care: A Delphi Study

Pediatric palliative care is increasingly recognized to be a specialized type of care requiring specific skills and knowledge, yet, as found in several countries, there is little available research evidence on which to base care. Objectives: The goal of the project was to achieve consensus among palliative care practitioners and researchers regarding the identification of pertinents lines of research. Method: A Delphi technique was used with an interdisciplinary panel (n=14–16) of researchers and frontline clinicians in pediatric palliative care in Canada. Results: Four priority research questions were identified: What matters most for patients and parents receiving pediatric palliative services? What are the bereavement needs of families in pediatric palliative care? What are the best practice standards in pain and symptom management? What are effective strategies to alleviate suffering at the end of life? Conclusions: These identified priorities will provide guidance and direction for research efforts in Canada, and may prove useful in providing optimal care to patients and families in pediatric palliative care

Contributions and recognition of patient partners in pediatric health research: a rapid scoping review protocol

Objective: The objective of this rapid scoping review is to: 1) assess the prevalence of acknowledgement and authorship of patient partners in pediatric health research; 2) understand how patient partners contribute through the research process; and 3) assess how patient engagement is identified in publications. Introduction: Patient-Oriented Research (POR) is an area of increasing interest and activity, with growing funding opportunities. Patient partners with significant contributions to a research project may be eligible for formal acknowledgment or authorship, however locating patient-engaged studies is difficult and time consuming, so there is little understanding of the prevalence of patient partner acknowledgement or authorship and how patient partners typically contribute to research projects. Inclusion criteria: This rapid scoping review will consider evidence sources that investigate topics related to pediatric patients aged (0-19 years) and that include acknowledgement or descriptions of one or more patient partner(s) contributions in one or more studies. We will exclude sources that include non-pediatric patients, are not in English, and not published in full in a journal (e.g. conference abstracts). Methods: We will search MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid) and CINAHL (EBSCOhost). In addition, we will search key sources of POR literature. To increase the rapidity of this review, only 25% of sources will be reviewed and extracted by two team members and the remaining sources will be screened and extracted by a single reviewer. Data will be extracted using a data extraction tool developed by the reviewers. The results will be presented in a tabular/and/or charted format and accompanied by a narrative summary describing how the results related to the review objectives and questions