What Type of Care is Palliative Care?
As a growing medical field, palliative care is specialized medical care providing patients comfort from the symptoms of a life-threatening illness. Palliative care may be offered to people facing a serious illness and can improve the quality of their life. This type of care is sometimes called supportive care and may also involve support for caregivers and loved ones.
Our palliative care professionals focus on improving the quality of life for the people we serve who receive care and their family members, always putting people and their families first. Our humanised approach makes people feel heard and secure while receiving care, and we make that our priority.
A team of nurses, caregivers, doctors and many other trained healthcare professionals deliver additional support that completes the ongoing care.
What is Palliative Care for the Elderly?
Access to palliative care is important for people with a terminal illness or condition affecting their length of life or becoming frail. After an older person gets a terminal diagnosis, they can have palliative care at any stage of their illness.
Nowadays, people live longer. Therefore, more older adults are living with chronic conditions, dementia and terminal illnesses such as cancer. Their frailty increases and they can suffer from different pain, discomfort and ache because of the serious health illness.
Every treatment has its side effects, and specialists are essential in offering help to older people and family caregivers to cope with these side effects, caregiver stress, and people’s suffering, distress and fears.
Functions of Palliative Care
Palliative care support is essential to improve the quality of life and the psychological, social, physical, and emotional needs in the last stage of a life-threatening illness suffering patients. People living with serious chronic diseases and pain need palliative care services to ease their healthcare.
The palliative care team provides access to treatment options with nursing, diagnosis, medicine, and support resources to help people through palliative care. Important things to remember are:
Improving the quality of life
Palliative home care for people with a terminal illness brings more comfort and lowers stress on patients. The palliative care approach helps family members face life-threatening illness challenges for their loved ones and improve their quality of life. This is managed through the prevention and relief of suffering, by detecting the disease early and by proper assessment, pain management, and treatment options.
Relief of pain and stress
Receiving palliative care from specialists with proper training and experience in symptom and effective pain reduction and control will ease the process for patients related to depression and anxiety.
Addressing emotional and spiritual concerns
When we speak of palliative care, it’s essential to know that the aim is to improve the overall well-being of the patient, such as spiritual, physical, emotional, and social.
Coordinating care with your doctors
A palliative care doctor provides medication management and determines therapies to treat ongoing pain, depression and anxiety, shortness of breath, and other symptoms. A doctor may offer extra guidance to help families make tough medical decisions.
Where is Palliative Care Provided?
Palliative care is provided in various places, which may include:
Home Care
Specialist community service providers deliver palliative care at home. These flexible programs are tailored to the individual’s and their family’s needs.
Hospital Care
When conditions become more complex, it could be that the person needs to be transferred to hospital care. Palliative care staff workers work together with the community palliative care services so they can proceed in managing the patient’s palliative care needs.
Residential Care Home
The decision for the patient to move into a residential care home depends on the person’s needs. The patient will receive the longer-term care they need at the care home. End-of-life needs are competently managed in these types of facilities.
Nursing homes and other specialised clinics
Staying at home is the most preferred choice for most people. Although a patient with a terminal illness may need hospice care or hospital care if one of the following reasons arise:
- More complex and specialist health-related needs
- Managing pain and other symptoms such as depression, fatigue, loss of appetite, and anxiety
- Whenever you, your family member or your caregiver needs a break
- When the family or the caregiver determines that the person can’t receive care at home as they are nearing the end of their life
The Difference Between Palliative Care and Hospice Care
Palliative care and hospice care are specialised areas of care in medicine that support and care for children and adults with a serious illnesses which is life-threatening but not limited to, such as:
- cancer
- dementia
- Parkinson’s disease
- heart failure
- stroke
- organ failure
- kidney disease
Whether a person has cancer or a stroke, the common purpose of palliative care and hospice care is to:
- Increase physical, emotional, and spiritual support
- Improve the quality of life
- Provide emotional help for the person and the person’s family
- Make crucial decisions about medicines and medical treatment
Both palliative and hospice care provide spiritual, physical, emotional, and financial support.
Availability is the main difference between palliative care and hospice care. For example, palliative care is available early, from the first moment of diagnosis, whether the patient still receives life-prolonging treatments.
Hospice care is only available when approaching the end of life. This care may include an option when the person with a serious illness decides to receive a life-prolonging treatment. To receive hospice care, doctors must estimate that the person has less than six months until the end of life.
The Difference Between Palliative care and End of Life Care
Palliative and end-of-life care alternatives have evolved during the past few decades. The differences are apparent and significant as decisions, and plans are made for patients and their loved ones. Though the concepts differ, they are similar.
Palliative care encompasses end-of-life care and involves the treatment of individuals suffering from a serious illness where complete reversal of the condition or a cure is no longer possible. It entails managing symptoms that either have a gradual onset and worsen over time or a rapid onset and progression. Palliative care’s purpose is for the patient to experience a decent quality of life, including improving the quality of every aspect of life, physical, emotional, spiritual, and social.
End-of-life is a subset of palliative care devoted to treating individuals nearing the end of their lives. End-of-life care is provided for individuals who are in their final year of life and, typically, their final six months for legal and medical reasons, even if this is challenging to predict. End-of-life care emphasises preserving the quality of life while providing support with legal matters. The emphasis on allowing patients to pass away with dignity is vital to end-of-life care.
Who Needs Palliative care?
Individuals living with a life-threatening, serious illness need to be offered palliative care. Palliative care may be part of treating people with cancer, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, heart failure, and many others. Even while palliative care is effective at any stage of the illness, the earlier it is given, the better.
Cancer is one of the illnesses most frequently treated with palliative care. The symptoms and the therapy may significantly impact the quality of life. Palliative care for cancer patients frequently entails doctors prescribing treatments for anxiety and depression as well as assistance for the family in making plans.
Benefits of Palliative Care
Palliative care aims to enhance all dimensions of life for those with serious or terminal illnesses while supporting their family members. The benefits may include the following:
- To encourage life and accept death as a natural process
- Early pain and symptom control
- It provides a system of support to encourage active living while an illness is being treated
- It integrates the care’s spiritual and psychosocial aspects
- Significantly reduced risk of depression
- Improves quality of life (body, mind and spirit)
- Prioritise the needs, aspirations, and choices of the individual
- Supports the patient, family and caregivers
- Gives support in making decisions
- A team approach to the care of the individual and their family
- Early clarification of treatment plans for patients and their families
- Reduces excessive hospital visits
Palliative Care Provided by UCS Team
Unique Community Services‘ goal is to transform care for the better, so the people we support receive the humanised care they deserve and feel comfortable. Palliative care is one of the services we provide, and we deal with symptom management, discussions on prognostic understanding and treatment plans.
Our expert clinicians provide high-quality, proactive care that provides comfort and improves our client families’ quality of life. Each person we support is unique, and our purpose is to share our caring nature as a source of understanding to those around us.
If you or a loved one in your family has a serious condition, palliative care may be an option you want to consider. As your trusted local provider, we are ready to support you!
Depending on where you live, you can contact us through our web page forms or by contacting one of our offices in Bristol or Manchester, and we’ll be happy to help you sort through all the necessary information.
