What’s the difference between hospice and palliative care?

Question

I’ve seen palliative care described as symptom-relieving treatment *usually* for terminal diseases, though it doesn’t have to **only** apply to terminal diseases. Doesn’t that make pretty much ALL medical treatment “palliative care”? Say if someone has epilepsy and they are treated with anti-seizure medicine to stop their seizures, would that fall under the definition of palliative care?

In: 8

Answer 1

An anti-seizure medication is still stopping (or at least reducing the severity of) seizures. A more conventional example of palliative care would be giving treating a cancer patient’s symptoms (pain, nausea, etc) without actually trying to treat the tumor(s).