Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review is to identify quality-of-life issues that affect participation in age-appropriate activities in chronically ill children, as reported by the children and their families.
Summary of key points: Social and emotional functioning scores on the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) 4.0 were found to have the greatest frequency of poor agreement between parents and children in 4 of the 6 studies included in this review, suggesting parents and children have wide variation in their assessment in these areas of psychosocial function.
Conclusions: Cumulative evidence appears to indicate that parents of children with chronic illness perceive their children as having a poorer quality of life than the children report for themselves.
Recommendations for clinical practice: Identifying differences and commonalities between these reports can guide health care practitioners to specific activities that should be the focus of caring for children; specifically, functional goal development can become more personalized and appropriate.