Palliative Care: Not Just for End of Life

alliative care is a unique approach to improving life and comfort during a serious health situation. With palliative care, the individual prioritizes the care plan by deciding what values are important to them – comfort, cure, communication, quality of life, etc. It has also been described as supportive care because it targets relief of physical, social, psychological, and spiritual distress.

Palliative care is a medical specialty backed by an interdisciplinary team involved in caring for a person facing a serious, possibly life-threatening illness. The palliative care team handles complex pain issues, coordinates intensive/sensitive communication exchanges and helps clarify the goals of care.

Depending on the individual’s needs and desires, palliative care may include home help, transportation, emotional and spiritual support, individual and family education, decision making, psychological support, and respite care for caregivers. Palliative care is compatible with all other medical treatments, and bringing in a palliative care team does not mean giving up on a cure. Palliative care is not the same as hospice, but can be brought in for pain control at the end of life.

Palliative care is holistic, looking at the challenges the disease imposes on all aspects of life – emotional, physical, and practical. Some people want to focus everything on fighting for a cure, and they don’t care about their current quality of life or the pain they have to endure. Others value time with family and friends and want pain managed effectively. The recipient of the care sets the priorities. However, it’s not always an either/or choice. In a study of lung cancer patients, those receiving palliative care not only experienced improved quality of life, but on average lived longer.

While cure and palliative care teams can and do work effectively to treat individuals at the same time, they have different approaches and different philosophies. In the curative model, the focus is on the body and its parts and symptoms. The care recipient’s body is differentiated from the mind, and the primary goal is finding a cure. The palliative care model values the patient’s entire experience. The person is viewed as a unique, complex being with physical, emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions. Concerns of the individual and their family are considered, and relief of suffering is the ultimate goal.

People receiving palliative care have been shown to enjoy a higher quality of life with less depression. Lowering pain and discomfort improves outcomes and gives both care recipients and their families a boost. The palliative care team typically includes a doctor, nurse, and social worker, depending on the individual’s desires and needs.

Palliative care should be considered whenever a complex medical condition is causing frequent or ongoing hospitalizations, there are issues with symptom control, the treatments are burdensome or multiple care teams create fragmented communications.