What is palliative care?
What is palliative care?*
Palliative care (from the Latin ‘palliare’: to cloak) focuses on the relief of pain and other symptoms and problems experienced in serious illness. The goal of palliative care is to improve quality of life, by increasing comfort, promoting dignity and providing a support system to the person who is ill and those close to them.
Palliative care is appropriate for anyone of any age who is facing serious illness. It can be delivered alongside active treatments designed to try to prolong life at an early point in the disease process. It is also applicable at the end of life and into bereavement
Palliative care neither hastens nor prolongs death. It celebrates life, even when time is limited. It regards dying as a normal process.
Palliative Care and hospice Care
Palliative care can be delivered in any care setting, including home, care homes, hospitals and hospices. Hospices provide palliative care services at home, in day care centres or hospice inpatient units. Most people who have inpatient hospice care return home once their problems or needs for care support are addressed.
Team delivery
In palliative care, decisions about treatment and care are made with the help of the members of a multidisciplinary team and in line with the person’s personal goals and preferences. Team members usually include doctors, nurses and social workers. Occupational or physiotherapists, chaplains, pharmacists, nutritionists and others might also form part of the team.
Learning from experience: reflection spots
Think of someone you know who has died. What made a difference to their quality of life? What impact did the care that they received have?
You may have been the close companion of someone who has needed palliative care. What did you need to help you during this person’s illness?
Questions and worries in serious illness
Serious illness or facing death can be a time of crisis, which gives rise to profound questions about the meaning of life and may challenge one’s sense of self.
Practical worries about financial issues or care arrangements may be a continuous source of concern. Some people fear being a burden, pain and suffering, or leaving their family.
In their ‘Handbook for Mortals’, Lynn and Harold (1999: p.16) suggest that the following are questions that might commonly arise:
- How long do I have?
- How ill will I get?
- Will I be in pain?
- What will my dying be like?
- What will happen to my children, my spouse, and my plans?
- Who will care for me?
- How can I avoid being a burden?
- Can I stay at home?
See also: www.growthhouse.org/educate/flash/mortals/layouts/frameset1.html
- The following link has further helpful information on what palliative care is:
www.helpwithseriousillness.co.uk/sites/default/files/What_is_Palliative_Care.pdf
- Avert.org, a charity aimed at averting HIV and AIDS worldwide, offers useful information relevant to any terminal illness or chronic/progressive condition.
See also:
alzheimers.org.uk/site/index.php
www.palliativecare.org.au - Australian-based but plenty of relevant and helpful information.
* We have drawn on some materials developed in the Peer Education Programme for End of Life Care Education among Older People and Their Carers, funded by The Burdett Trust for Nursing with additional support from Age UK. The Programme is led by Jane Seymour, Sue Ryder Care Professor of Palliative and End of Life Studies at the University of Nottingham (jane.seymour@nottingham.ac.uk; 0115 8231202)
Awareness Week Events
There are hundreds of Dying Matters Awareness Week events going on nationwide. View them here, or publicise your own.
