Multidisciplinary simulation in pediatric critical care: the death of a child.

Health care providers are trained to care for the living. They may complete their education and enter the workforce without ever experiencing the death of a patient. Inexperience with the different roles of the multidisciplinary health care team is common. Moreover, the death of a child has a profound effect on parents and staff. In such situations, the expertise of the multidisciplinary team can make a difference. A multidisciplinary education project that uses high-fidelity simulation based on pediatric death and dying was developed to provide an experience during which health care practitioners could practice communicating with families about the death of their child and dealing with different grief reactions.