End-of-Life Care

To the Editor.

Recently, the care that pediatricians provide to dying children has begun to attract attention.¹ Numerous specialty boards and organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have developed professional standards on end-of-life care for their members.^2,,3 Although it may not be accurate to attribute inadequate end-of-life care to a single factor, insufficient training of clinicians in palliative care methods is undoubtedly a major contributor to the problem.⁴ Certainly, the textbooks used to train pediatricians must share some of the blame. Our previous research has revealed grossly deficient coverage of end-of-life content in 50 best-selling medical textbooks, including 4 top pediatrics textbooks. …