Battling a serious illness can be exhausting. In the pursuit of health, aggressive treatments or stubborn ailments can get in the way and cause new complications. A holistic approach to a person’s well-being protects their physical health and psychological, emotional, social, and spiritual wellness.
Patients suffering from serious illnesses can benefit from a specialized form of care, known as palliative care, which focuses on managing the symptoms of their disease while also providing comfort and support to live life on their own terms.
Patients also require other forms of assistance, such as emotional support when faced with a negative prognosis, or legal advice, such as guidance when filling out free medical power of attorney forms.
Understanding the Nature of Palliative Care
Palliative care is an emerging field of healthcare that looks to improve the quality of life for patients and healthcare providers. Anyone suffering from a serious health condition can benefit from palliative care.
Since it addresses all aspects of wellness, it requires a multidisciplinary approach and a team of specialized caregivers. Palliative care professionals include:
- Doctors
- Social workers
- Counselors
- Psychologists
- Therapists
- Nutritionists
- Spiritual advisors
In palliative care, medical professionals and other caregivers work to help patients live with their conditions. For example, cancer patients will also receive treatments for side effects resulting from their chemotherapy sessions. Another example of palliative care would be offering mental health counseling for dementia patients facing anxiety about their condition.
Palliative care helps patients find peace of mind, even when dealing with serious illnesses.
Four Main Benefits of Palliative Care
The main goal of palliative care is not to cure a patient’s illness—that is left to primary healthcare providers. Instead, palliative care seeks to provide comfort and teach coping mechanisms to patients living with severe medical conditions.
Seeking palliative care can help patients in several ways. The four main benefits of palliative care are outlined below.
Symptom Management
Serious health conditions often have severe symptoms. Sometimes, even the treatment for these illnesses can induce severe side effects. Palliative care helps patients manage those symptoms and minimize the discomfort that they cause.
Greater Quality of Life
As an outcome of symptom management, palliative care patients enjoy an improved quality of life. Freedom or reduction in their pain and discomfort allows them to live a more active and social lifestyle. Being able to live with a degree of normalcy despite their condition also improves patients’ mental health, reducing the risk of them experiencing depression and other similar conditions.
Extended Lifespan
Palliative care supplements medical treatments, boosting their effectiveness and helping speed up recovery. These factors combine to lead to longer survival, even for patients living with terminal illnesses.
Advice and Support
One of the main aims of palliative care is to help patients better understand their condition so that they can cope with it more effectively. Palliative caregivers can help patients make decisions about treatment plans by providing expert medical advice. Being well-informed helps patients and their family members make better plans for dealing with an illness and what will be needed in the coming weeks, months, and years.
Who Can Benefit from Palliative Care?
Because many of the conditions that require palliative care arise due to aging, there is a misconception that palliative care is only meant for elderly or terminally ill patients. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
In fact, palliative care is meant for patients of all ages and can be implemented at any point. In some cases, it needs to begin from the moment of diagnosis; in others, it may not be needed until later in the treatment or unless serious health issues arise during treatment.
Regardless of age or severity, palliative care can greatly benefit patients suffering from serious illnesses. The list of conditions where palliative care is recommended includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Cancer
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- Dementia
- Heart diseases
- Parkinson’s disease
The number of different conditions that require palliative care means that it can be administered in a variety of settings. From patients’ homes and assisted living centers to outpatient clinics and hospitals, palliative care helps patients overcome the challenges of living with serious illnesses. Doctors can help direct patients to resources for finding palliative care when they deliver a serious illness diagnosis.
According to the World Health Organization, 56.8 million people worldwide need palliative care. Out of that number, it is estimated that at least 25.7 million are in the last year of their lives.
Though palliative care is not the same as hospice care, it does include end-of-life considerations. Palliative caregivers can advise patients with terminal illnesses on how to organize their affairs, including setting up advanced health directives, assigning medical power of attorney, and creating a last will.
With every aspect of well-being taken care of, palliative care shields patients from the worst symptoms and outcomes of otherwise frightening ailments.