WHAT IS PALLIATIVE MEDICINE

WHAT IS PALLIATIVE MEDICINE?

Palliative Medicine is the comprehensive care of patients with life threatening or terminal illnesses where the focus is on relief of suffering and enhancement of quality of life. Information sharing, advance care planning and coordination of care are implicit. Support of the referring clinicians and the caregivers is included. No treatment is explicitly excluded but all are weighed for benefit and burden against the patient’s values, beliefs and goals. Treatments and tests to prolong life and cure disease may well be appropriate. No specific time frame or prognosis is required. Indeed, starting palliative medicine earlier in an advanced illness may prolong life by increasing the energy and motivation the patient has for recovery.

Palliative care includes all the above but adds an interdisciplinary team of social work, chaplains, and others to bolster the provision of psychosocial, emotional and spiritual support.

One of our staff, Dr. Jane Brummer, helped explain the Palliative Medical approach to patients and families by citing two points:

“Help me to understand”. Say it over and over as you talk to patients and families rather than saying “Why do you think that?”
Keep the roles straight. It is the job of the patient/family to tell us their goals and values. It is our job to prescribe a treatment program to meet those goals or explain why they cannot be met. We are tempted to do their job and they are tempted to do ours.