What Is Palliative Care and When Should Seniors Consider It?
Palliative care focuses on relief from symptoms and stress of serious illness, improving quality of life for patients and families. Often confused with hospice, palliative care is appropriate much earlier in illness and alongside curative treatment. Understanding palliative care helps seniors access these beneficial services when appropriate.
What Palliative Care Is
Palliative care is specialized medical care focused on providing relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress of serious illness. The goal is improving quality of life for both patients and families. Palliative care addresses physical symptoms, emotional distress, and practical concerns.
Unlike hospice, palliative care does not require terminal diagnosis or forgoing curative treatment. Patients receive palliative care while continuing to pursue treatment for their conditions. Palliative care adds a layer of support focused on comfort and quality of life.
How Palliative Care Differs from Hospice
Hospice requires a terminal prognosis of six months or less and focuses exclusively on comfort rather than cure. Palliative care has no prognosis requirement and works alongside disease-directed treatment. Hospice is typically provided at home while palliative care is available in hospitals, clinics, and homes.
Some people receive palliative care for years while managing serious illness. Others transition from palliative care to hospice when disease progresses and curative treatment is no longer desired. The services complement each other along the illness trajectory.
Who Benefits from Palliative Care
Anyone with serious illness causing symptoms, stress, or reduced quality of life may benefit from palliative care. Conditions commonly addressed include cancer, heart failure, COPD, kidney disease, neurological diseases, and other serious chronic conditions.
Palliative care is appropriate at any stage of serious illness, not just at the end. Early palliative care involvement improves quality of life and may even extend survival for some conditions. Do not wait until symptoms are severe to seek palliative support.
What Palliative Care Teams Do
Palliative care teams include physicians, nurses, social workers, and chaplains working together to address the full range of patient and family needs. Teams manage pain and other physical symptoms using medical expertise in symptom control.
Teams help patients and families understand illness, treatment options, and what to expect. They facilitate conversations about goals of care and help match treatment to patient values. They provide emotional and spiritual support throughout illness.
Symptom Management
Palliative specialists have expertise in managing difficult symptoms. Pain control using various medications and approaches relieves suffering. Management of nausea, shortness of breath, fatigue, anxiety, and other symptoms improves daily function and comfort.
Symptoms that have not responded to standard treatment may improve with palliative approaches. Palliative teams have additional tools and techniques for complex symptom management.
Accessing Palliative Care
Palliative care is available in many hospitals, either as inpatient consultation or outpatient clinics. Some home health programs include palliative services. Ask healthcare providers about palliative care or request a referral. Insurance including Medicare covers palliative care services.
Getting Palliative Care Information
All Seniors Foundation can help seniors understand and access palliative care services. Living well with serious illness is possible with appropriate support. Contact us if you have questions about whether palliative care might help you or a loved one.
