Palliative Care: 10 Critical Reasons Why You Should Consider This Empowering Choice
Illness can be one of the worst experiences that a patient or his or her family has to go through. Palliative care is a ray of hope for those who are battling ailments that are complicated in nature. This is a comprehensive, patient-centered approach taken to enhance the quality of life. Understanding the full scope and benefits of palliative medicine will help you make decisions that are in line with your values and goals, whether for yourself or a loved one.
What is palliative care?
Palliative Care is a medical specialty that treats the symptoms, stress, and pain caused by serious illness. Unlike hospice care, palliative care is available at any stage in a person’s serious illness, even from the time of diagnosis. It can be provided along with aggressive or curative treatments. For example, palliative care can be used to treat nausea, fatigue, or emotional stress in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
The care provided is holistic, tending to physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and other needs. It may be offered in different settings such as hospitals, outpatient clinics, or even within the comfort of a patient’s own home.
10 Reasons why you should consider palliative care
Improved Quality of Life
The very important basic philosophy behind palliative care is that the quality of life is first. It’s not just about stretching the days, but also about improving them. The multidisciplinary effort by the palliative care teams will treat symptoms such as pain, chronic fatigue, and nausea, and will look after emotional issues.
Consider a patient with advanced multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis results in muscle spasms and prohibits mobility. These are physical symptoms that, when alleviated, palliative care can handle. It may even alleviate depression. Improvement allows patients to spend more time with loved ones and to engage in hobbies.This is how palliative medicine allows patients to have moments of joy regardless of their medical condition.
Patients-centered care is personalized.
There are no two diseases that have exactly the same development. Likewise, no two persons have the same needs, goals, and preferences. This fact is reflected in palliative medicine, too: it individualizes its services for each particular person. The particularities of your situation, and your preference list, serve as a blueprint in devising a comprehensive care plan.
Somebody being treated for a highly aggressive type of cancer might focus on preserving their energy and comfort to create quality time with their loved ones. A patient may decide they would rather maximize pain management and comfort than intense treatment. In whatever way it presents, palliative care does not judge; it supports and respects your decision.
You take center stage with this level of personal attention in your care.
“Read more about personalized care“
Advanced Pain Management Knowledge
Pain is a very disabling and common symptom in serious illness but is often not treated. Palliative care can make all the difference. Pain management specialists are often included in care teams, trained to use advanced techniques for treating even the most severe and chronic pain.
Pain relief can come in many forms. Obviously, pain relief can be accomplished with controlled and responsible doses of opioids, while also introducing alternative therapies such as acupuncture or massage. Metastatic cancer patients sometimes report deep bone pain. The various disciplines within the palliative care service can combine medication with physical therapy and other therapies, which include nerve blocks, for relief.
Improved Communication and Coordination of Care
When you work your way through a complicated medical system with many specialists involved, communication easily falls between the cracks. With the team-based, coordinated approach, palliative medicine bridges the gaps in communication.
For instance, a patient with chronic pulmonary disease can be getting input from a primary care physician, a cardiologist, and a pulmonologist. The palliative team will ensure these voices line up with your big picture goals, and it decreases confusion.
The streamlined communication builds trust and reduces the stress from managing your care.
Emotional and Psycho-Social support
Sickness is an itinerary of soul and mind also: diagnosis often shows their burden with symptoms like anxious feelings, even fears, or deepest loneliness. Medicine finds a friendly word in the consoling palliative treatments, reassures, and supports.
The mental health professional counselor and therapist may be able to help the patients and their families work with difficult emotions. Those patients who are anxious about their prognosis may benefit from strategies including mindfulness and cognitive-behavioral therapies.
Many palliative teams also include chaplains who can help patients with questions about faith or meaning.
Support for Families and Caregiver
Serious illness isn’t just about the patient. Caregivers, too, can feel the weight of a serious illness and may feel overwhelmed, tired, or unsure. Palliative medicine recognizes the critical role caregivers play and provides them with resources and support.
The care teams provide information to the families on how to manage daily health challenges, such as how to handle a loved one in case of immobilization or taking medication. They also provide respite care that gives caregivers time to rest and recharge in preparation for taking care of their loved one.
A family caring for an elderly with dementia may be guided on safe environments, behavioral changes management, and finding time for themselves.
Relief for an Array of Symptoms
Symptoms other than pain are also attended to by the teams of palliative care. The symptoms include dyspnea, pruritus, insomnia, loss of appetite, digestive discomfort, and sleep disturbances.
Consider a patient with end-stage renal failure whose sleeps are disturbed by the serious itching caused by uric accumulation. The specialist in palliative care may recommend some antipruritic medication besides topical treatments that help in giving good sleep to the patients.
This relief brings comfort and peace into everyday life.
Guide to Making Complex Medical Decisions
It is often hard to know which option to choose when many options are presented, some of which may be aggressive and others experimental. Palliative Care offers professional guidance in light of what will be gained and lost from various treatments and interventions.
A patient who is considering perhaps a risky surgery may want to consult his or her palliative care team about what that procedure will do to his health, not only at the time, but also with regard to mobility, comfort, and quality of life. You can feel confident and have transparency in your decisions.
Holistic and Whole Person Care
Holistic care is a feature of palliative medicine. It encompasses more than symptoms of a physical nature; it includes all dimensions: emotional, social, and financial, and the spiritual.
Palliative care can involve anything from music therapy, meditation, to legacy projects that leave behind a memory for those who stay back. Palliative care also involves day-to-day aspects, like advising on advance directives and sorting out insurance issues.
Universally accessible
Palliative care is not reserved for older patients. Palliative care spans all ages: from the newborn child with a congenital condition to the middle adult year individual dealing with a progressive heart condition.
Palliative care highly values the principle of inclusive health by meeting people where they are on their journey.
Difference between Palliative Care and Hospice Care
What is Hospice Care?
Hospice is a form of palliative medicine which concentrates on the needs of a dying patient. Hospice typically begins when a curative treatment is no longer desired or is ineffective and a patient has six months to live or less if they let their illness take its course.
Hospice care focuses solely on comforting patients and ensuring their dignity in the final stages. Hospice care is often provided by a team that provides 24/7 support for patients and their family members in hospices, private homes or nursing homes.
Key Distinction
Not all palliative care is hospice, although all hospice care is palliative. The timing and intention are the main differences. Hospice care is a type of palliative treatment that may begin at diagnosis and runs concurrently with other treatments, whereas palliative care is mainly comfort-oriented in the last months.
“Learn more about hospice care“
FAQs
Who qualifies for palliative care?
Any person with a serious disease, such as cancer, Parkinson’s or chronic lung diseases, can benefit. Often, the earlier the involvement, the better. You do not have to wait until your symptoms get worse.
How is palliative medicine going to improve your daily life?
Palliative care enables you to highlight the things in your life that are most meaningful. This can be spending quality time with the family or continuing to enjoy favorite hobbies.
Will I still see my regular doctor?
Palliative care is given in addition to your ongoing treatments, not instead of them. Your primary physician continues to play an active role in your care.
How much does palliative treatment cost?
Many insurance plans cover the service of palliative care. Medicare and Medicaid cover it, making it accessible to most patients.
What is the role of the family in palliative medicine?
Family members are quite important in palliative medicine. Not only are families supported in their caregiving, but they also have a say in the creation of care plans that honor loved ones’ wishes.
Conclusion
Palliative care is a gift in suffering times, putting dignity above everything else. It is a blessing and a benefit to the patients concerned, with medical treatment, comfort, connection, and clarity. It allows patients and their families to attend to what is important in life, whatever the circumstances.
