What Is Palliative Care?
Palliative Care is a specialized medical service that offers a transitional health care option between traditional healthcare and hospice care. Palliative Care patients are not terminal, yet they are not well enough to manage their own symptoms. Palliative Care patients don’t require hospitalization, yet their needs are beyond nursing care or care that can be provided by family members.
Palliative Care focuses on the medical, nutritional, emotional, and spiritual needs of a patient who is often in the advanced stages of a serious illness. Depending on the nature of their illness, patients may still pursue curative treatments while also receiving palliative care to help them improve their quality of life.
Beneficial Outcomes
Expert Health Unit Studies show that patients who receive palliative care achieve a much enhanced quality of life, not only in regard to the immediate relief of symptoms, but also in terms of increased engagement and gaining a greater sense of control regarding their healthcare decisions. Can improve patient comfort and overall well-being across physical, psychosocial and spiritual domains. Helps individuals with severe illness to avoid hospitalizations by addressing their pain and symptom management needs outside of [...]
Palliative Care vs. Hospice Care
It’s fairly common to confuse palliative care with hospice care, especially in the non-medical community. There are similarities, yes, but there are also important differences. More rehabilitative in nature, palliative care is not end-of-life care. A patient under palliative care has not reached a stage where his or her disease is considered terminal and therefore may elect to continue curative treatments. In addition, palliative care is not dictated by strict definition protocol, as is hospice care. Palliative Care: [...]
Symptom Management
Symptom management in palliative care works to provide care to seriously ill patients. Primary care and specialty physicians work with palliative care providers to effectively help the patient and their family manage the symptoms of illness, including helping them to cope with and understand the illness trajectory and navigate complex medical decision-making. Palliative care is focused on providing patients with relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress of a serious illness - whatever the diagnosis or prognosis. Palliative care [...]
Wholistic Goals
Palliative care is a medical specialty with the goal of relieving pain, managing symptoms, and reducing the stress caused by serious illness whatever the diagnosis or prognosis. Palliative care can be utilized at any point in an illness and can be provided at the same time as curative treatment. The primary goals of palliative care aim to improve the patient’s quality of life, provide relief from distressing symptoms, improve the effectiveness of medical treatments, and give patients more control over [...]