WHAT IS PALLIATIVE CARE?

 

Palliative Care is defined by the World Health Organisation as follows:-

Palliative Care improves the quality of life of patients and families who face life-threatening illness, by providing pain and symptom relief, spiritual and psychosocial support from diagnosis to the end of life and bereavement.

 

Palliative Care:-

• Provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms

• Affirms life and regards dying as a normal process

• Intends neither to hasten or postpone death

• Integrates the psychosocial and spiritual aspects of patient care

• Offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death

• Offers a support system to help the family cope during the patients illness and in their own bereavement.

• Uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated.

• Will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness.

• Is applicable early in the course of the illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications.