Palliative Care
Improve Your Quality of Life
Palliative care helps reduce pain and suffering and improves your quality of life. The goal isn’t to cure your condition but to relieve its symptoms and the side effects of treatment. You can receive palliative care in the hospital, at home, or in another facility. It may be covered by insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid.
Types of Treatment
Your type of treatment depends on the kind of relief you need. If you have pain, you may be prescribed medication or physical therapy. For anxiety, treatment may include joining a support group. Palliative care comes in many forms since it works to treat all of you, not just
your condition.
Palliative care may help with:
- Physical symptoms like nausea, shortness of breath, fatigue, or pain
- Emotional symptoms like anxiety or depression
- Spiritual concerns like questioning beliefs or trying to find peace
- Practical concerns like financial worries or questions about treatment
Creating Your Care Plan
If you’d like to receive palliative care, tell your doctor or nurse. They will have the hospital’s palliative care team meet with you to talk about your goals. Be sure to explain what is important to you — this will help the team create a plan that works for you.
This is a good time to consider advance care planning as well — deciding what treatments you would and would not want in a situation where you could not speak for yourself. See
Advance Directives for information about different kinds of advance care plans.
Who Is My Care Team?
Depending on what type of treatment you need, your palliative care team may
include many different professionals, such as doctors, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, and social workers.
Different From Hospice Care
The goal of hospice care is bringing comfort through the end of life when treatments are no longer helping. Palliative care also focuses on comfort rather than curing illness — but unlike hospice, palliative care can be given any time after you are diagnosed and along with other treatments.