Palliative care, what’s it?
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Its quality of life care. Often for patients with illnesses or ailments that are life threatening or uncurable. I do some charity work for a great company that provides palliative care for a lot of older people with terminal illnesses called ACCORD hospice. Check their website. It has a lot of info on what they do.
People with cancer for example will receive physical care such as dealing with nausea and loss of appetite, fatigue, difficulty sleeping. As well as emotional care for things like coping with depression, anxiety, fear of their impending death. This kind of crosses the palliative/hospice care definition though. Palliative turns into hospice care when the treatments are simply to make someone who is dying as comfortable as possible. Palliative care is still caring for a non terminal patient to enable them to live comfortably and to enhance any chances of curative treatment. Palliative/Hospice care is mainly semantics in the US. We just use palliative here in the UK.
Cancer patients will obviously deteriorate over time with chemo treatment and palliative care also helps with the transition to a fragile state both phsyically and mentally.
They also can provide support to family and friends. Theres a charity here called McMillan for cancer patients that provide amazing support to families going through a cancer diagnosis/treatment. Ranging from support with coping emotionally or even every day things like sorting finances in preparation for the worst outcome.
Here in the UK, we use the term palliative care for any stage of the care of a seriously ill person from diagnosis to death.
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