The Advantages Of Palliative Care
Palliative care is specialized care that addresses the various symptoms — physical, psychological, and spiritual — that people with life-threatening and long-term health issues face. While palliative care is always a part of hospice care, the latter focuses on the needs of people with terminal conditions and a prognosis of less than six months to live, whereas palliative care is often provided in conjunction with curative treatments.
This article explains the benefits of palliative care.
How Palliative Care Improves Quality of Life
Palliative care is provided by a team of experts with different areas of expertise. This group typically has both primary care and palliative medicine doctors and nurses, but may also include social workers, chaplains or other spiritual counselors, dieticians, physical therapists and palliative care volunteers.
Whether given to patients who are receiving treatment for their illness or to those who have decided to stop treatment, palliative care helps patients focus more on friends and family and less on their medical conditions.
Physical Symptom Management
One of the benefits of palliative care is that it helps patients address their physical symptoms. This includes medications and other treatments for problems like pain, discomfort, nausea, fatigue and intestinal issues.
Relief for Mental Health Conditions
Serious physical health issues can cause or worsen mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. Patients experience palliative benefits by using medications and getting counseling to help reduce their symptoms.
Better Understanding of Treatment Plans
The more patients know about the treatments they are receiving, the more comfortable they are with those interventions. Clear, comprehensive information on a patient’s care plan is an important palliative care benefit.
Assistance Dealing with Healthcare & Health Insurance
Another advantage of palliative care is the help patients receive to deal with the healthcare and health insurance systems. This can include financial benefits, like decreased costs through better utilization of these resources.
Spiritual Guidance & Support
One of the palliative benefits most important to some people is the time they spend with a spiritual advisor. Focusing on wisdom from their faith tradition can help reduce the stress they feel and promote a brighter outlook.
Enhanced Sense of Control & Peace of Mind
Being treated for a serious medical condition can cause a patient to feel like they’ve lost control of their life to a degree. One of palliative care’s benefits is restoring a sense of control and providing the patient with peace of mind.
Greater Satisfaction with Quality of Care & Attention to Patients’ Needs
Another of the advantages of palliative care is that the benefits above demonstrate that the patient’s needs are the top priority for their care team. That revelation can lead to increased satisfaction with the quality of care the patient receives.
Fewer Unnecessary Hospital Visits
Many people find that one of the most helpful benefits of palliative care is that it enables them to reduce the number of times they have to go to the hospital. The savings in time and effort can be significant.
Who Benefits Most From Palliative Care?
People with a wide range of severe or long-term health conditions can enjoy a higher quality of life through palliative benefits. That includes patients with the following conditions:
- Cancer
- Heart failure
- Kidney disease
- Liver disease
- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
- Congestive heart failure
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
- Parkinson’s disease
The Importance of Talking About Palliative Care
Caregivers, patients, and their families may be reluctant to talk about palliative care, as there’s a mistaken perception that doing so signals a “surrender” to the illness. On the contrary, capitalizing on palliative care means embracing life by getting control of symptoms that are interfering with the enjoyment of it.
Patients and families should feel comfortable asking for information on what palliative care is and how they can benefit from it. Care teams are always happy to provide insights on palliative medicine and assist with making it a part of the treatment plan.
Learn more about palliative care at Baptist Health.
