Palliative Care
Palliative care—specialized medical care for people living with a serious illness—focuses on easing pain and discomfort, reducing stress, and helping patients have the highest quality of life possible. Palliative care is based on the needs of the patient, not the prognosis of the likely course of the illness.
Palliative care aims to alleviate symptoms such as pain, depression, shortness of breath, fatigue, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, and anxiety. It is appropriate at any age and any stage of a serious illness, not only at end-of-life.
The palliative care team is an interdisciplinary team that works together with the patient, their caregivers, family, and the patient’s other doctors and communicates with everyone to help match the treatment choices with the patient’s goals.
What is Palliative Care?
Are you or a loved one living with a serious illness? Palliative Care can help. Palliative care is specialized medical care focused on relieving the symptoms and stress of a serious illness. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage, and you can have it along with curative treatment. The goal is to improve your quality of life.
I appreciate the Coalition’s many accomplishments in advancing hospice and palliative care, and I’m most proud of its publishing the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care.
Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care, 4th edition
Create a blueprint for excellence by establishing a comprehensive foundation for gold-standard palliative care, including evidence-based processes and practices for providing safe and reliable high-quality care for all people living with serious illness, regardless of their diagnosis, prognosis, age or where they live or receive care.
