Palliative Care
Palliative care is specialized medical care for people with serious or incurable illnesses, focusing on providing patients with relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress of a seriously chronic or terminal illness.
The Palliative Care Team provides patient-centered consultations for inpatient as an interdisciplinary team with the goal of improving quality of life, relieving physical, emotional and spiritual suffering, while preserving the mental and physical functioning of the patient and their family to the fullest extent possible.
The Palliative Care Team includes palliative care physicians, nurses, social worker and chaplains.
The Palliative Care Team can provide assistance when:
- Pain and other symptoms interfere in the patient's quality of life,
- Help is needed to clarify goals of care of the patient,
- Help is needed in end-of-life planning and decision-making,
- Families and caregivers need assistance with bereavement and grief,
- Children in the family are affected by the patient's illness,
- Emotional or spiritual distress is unrelieved,
- Problems arise from advanced illness, or
- Disease-focused treatments are no longer helping.
Palliative care is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious or incurable illness, and can be provided jointly with medical treatment.