What actually is palliative care? And how is it different to end-of-life care?
Palliative care aims to prevent and relieve physical, social, emotional, spiritual and existential distress.
- Palliative care aims to prevent and relieve physical, social, emotional, spiritual and existential distress.
- Palliative care also supports family caregivers during the disease journey and bereavement phase.
- It is not just for people who are about to die and seeking palliative care does not mean “giving up”.
Not just for someone’s final days
- The full benefit of this holistic approach can only be realised if people are referred early to palliative care – ideally from the time they are diagnosed with a terminal illness.
- Unfortunately, this rarely happens and palliative care tends to blur with end-of-life care.
Palliative care can involve difficult conversations
- Palliative care can be provided at home, hospital, hospice or residential aged care facility, depending on the preference and circumstances of patients and their family carers.
- Patient preferences for care and what matters most to them are discussed with their doctor or other health professionals and with their loved ones with advance care planning.
- These discussions can include information on their preferred place of care, preferred place of death, personal care needs such as dietary preferences and religious and spiritual practices.
How palliative care delivery has changed
- But research indicates a solely clinical model of palliative care (mainly symptom management funded through the health system) is inadequate to address the complex aspects of death, dying, loss and grief.
- A public health palliative care approach views the community as an equal partner in the long and complex task of providing quality health care at the end of someone’s life.
- It promotes conversations about patients’ and families’ goals of care, what matters to them, their needs and wishes, minimising barriers to a “good death”, and supporting the family post-bereavement.
- Read more:
Passed away, kicked the bucket, pushing up daisies – the many ways we don't talk about death
Tailored to need
- Palliative care should be tailored to each person, rather than a one-size-fits-all clinical model that doesn’t respect autonomy and choice.
- Palliative care hospitalisations have increased in recent years compared to all hospitalisations, with 65% of such admissions ending with the patient dying in hospital.