What is Palliative Care?

According to James Cleary, MD, past president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine: “Many of us would only associate palliative care with care of the imminently dying.” However, he notes: “It is much, much more than this. A patient’s journey with a disease starts from the point of diagnosis, and we need to support him or her through this process.”*

This is a large and long-term undertaking. Today’s medical advances enable millions of Americans, such as those living with chronic diseases and conditions such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and COPD, to live longer than ever before. These are the very patients who often frequent hospitals and emergency rooms and can be the most costly to the health care system as well as be in the most distress living with often complex co-morbidities. Though, to date, like hospice, a focus in palliative care has been on cancer patients and their needs, a non-disease-specific focus on longer term quality of care can provide a bridge linking many of today’s most needy chronic disease patients to hospice as the last piece in an expected continuum of care.

More daunting still, however, again as in hospice, there is no packaged program for palliative care service delivery. Rather, a very wide range of tools and care services must be very specifically targeted for each patient’s needs. These needs can range from pain management, nausea relief, depression counseling, and a real desire to learn self management skills. Both conventional and new measures, such as telepalliative interventions, are necessary for delivering comprehensive palliative care.

*cited in Bergin, M., “Palliative Care more than for end of life,” Wisconsin State Journal, Oct. 16, 2003.