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About Palliative Care
Palliative Care…
- Treats pain and suffering of all kinds: relieving and preventing pain, managing disease symptoms that cause distress, and easing the broader, practical impacts of illness.
- Views the patient as a whole person, combining skills and expertise from medicine, nursing, social work, and chaplaincy. Professionals team up to address the physical, emotional, spiritual, and social aspects of illness, and offer appropriate forms of relief.
- Offers support to family caregivers and others affected by burdens of illness, within the household setting.
- Provides assistance to families in advance healthcare planning, to ensure that patients receive the treatments they need, in relation to goals they have chosen.
- Works to improve the quality of life for all patients and families living with serious, chronic illness.
Palliative Care is Different from Hospice
Hospice care is appropriate at the end of life, but palliative care can help many patients at any stage of serious, chronic illness. Hospice often includes palliative care, but patients benefit from palliative care, years before hospice is needed. Palliative care helps with any illness that causes chronic pain, suffering, or decreased enjoyment and quality of life. Many forms of public and private health insurance pay for palliative care: Ask for it when it’s needed.