What is Palliative Care?

The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) defines palliative care as “patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering”.  It takes into account all aspects of the patient’s life, (including physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs) to provide relief from the symptoms, pain, physical stress, and mental stress of a serious illness.  This helps facilitate patient independence by providing access to information and choices whenever possible.

Palliative care can help manage a patient’s stress, anxiety, depression, physical pain, shortness of breath, nausea, immobility, insomnia, and chronic fatigue.  Palliative care is also referred to as comfort care, and once the patient feels comfortable and functional, caregiver stress levels also tend to drop.

An interdisciplinary team composed of both palliative and non-palliative health care professionals, chaplains, social workers, psychologists, and physical therapists collaborate with patients and their families to communicate care needs.  The dignity of the patient is taken into account throughout the course of the illness, during the dying process, and after death.  Palliative care can be achieved both in- and outside of a hospital setting with community-based care.

The main difference between hospice and palliative care is that palliative is often initiated in the facility where treatment is taking place, while hospice is generally initiated in the home.  Palliative care focuses on improving quality of life and providing comfort to patients of all ages with chronic, serious, and life-threatening illnesses.

Chronic diseases that commonly incorporate palliative care include heart and kidney failure, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, and the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.  Because of its focus on lower costs and shorter hospital stays, the field of palliative care is growing rapidly.