<p><strong>OBJECTIVES: </strong>Pediatric residents are expected to be competent in end of life (EOL) care. We aimed to quantify pediatric resident exposure to patient deaths, and the context of these exposures.</p>

<p><strong>METHODS: </strong>Retrospective chart review of all deceased patients at one children's hospital over three years collected patient demographics, time and location of death. Mode of death was determined after chart review. Each death was cross-referenced with pediatric resident call schedules to determine residents involved within 48 hours of death. Descriptive statistics are presented.</p>

<p><strong>RESULTS: </strong>Of 579 patients who died during the study period, 46% had resident involvement. Most deaths occurred in the NICU (30% of all deaths) however, resident exposure to EOL care most commonly occurred in the PICU (52% of resident exposures) and were after withdrawals of life-sustaining therapy (41%), followed by non-escalation (31%) and failed resuscitation (15%). During their post-graduate year (PGY)-1, &lt;1% of residents encountered a patient death. During PGY-2 and PGY-3, 96% and 78%, respectively, of residents encountered at least one death. During PGY-2, residents encountered a mean of 3.5 patient deaths (range 0-12); during PGY-3, residents encountered a mean of 1.4 deaths (range 0-5). Residents observed for their full 3-year residency encountered a mean of 5.6 deaths (range 2-10).</p>

<p><strong>CONCLUSIONS: </strong>Pediatric residents have limited but variable exposure to EOL care, with most exposures in the ICU after withdrawal of life-sustaining technology. Educators should consider how to optimize EOL education with limited clinical exposure, and design resident support and education with these variable exposures in mind.</p>

<p><strong>BACKGROUND</strong>: Knowledge about how children die in pediatric hospitals is limited, and this hinders improvement in hospital-based end-of-life care.</p>

<p><strong>METHODS: </strong>We conducted a retrospective chart review of all the patients who died in a children's hospital between July 2011 and June 2014, collecting demographic and diagnostic information, hospital length of stay, location of death, and palliative care consultation. A qualitative review of provider notes and resuscitation records was used to create 5 mutually exclusive modes of death, which were then assigned to each patient. Analysis included the calculation of descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression modeling.</p>

<p><strong>RESULTS: </strong>We identified 579 patients who were deceased; 61% were &lt;1 year of age. The ICU was the most common location of death (NICU 29.7%; PICU 27.8%; cardiac ICU 16.6%). Among the 5 modes of death, the most common was the withdrawal of life-sustaining technology (40.2%), followed by nonescalation (25.6%), failed resuscitation (22.8%), code then withdrawal (6.0%), and death by neurologic criteria (5.3%). After adjustment, patients who received a palliative care consultation were less likely to experience a code death (odds ratio 0.31; 95% confidence interval 0.13-0.75), although African American patients were more likely than white patients to experience a code death (odds ratio 2.46; 95% confidence interval 1.05-5.73), mostly because of code events occurring in the first 24 hours of hospitalization.</p>

<p><strong>CONCLUSIONS: </strong>Most deaths in a children's hospital occur in ICUs after the withdrawal of life-sustaining technology. Race and palliative care involvement may influence the manner of a child's death.</p>