Palliative Care
Palliative care, or supportive care, focuses on comfort rather than treatment, and seeks to improve quality of life for patients with serious, life-limiting illness. Multidisciplinary palliative care teams include doctors, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, nutritionists, chaplains and other caring professionals who work with patients and their families to provide support during this difficult time.
Merit Health is committed to providing quality, compassionate palliative care that honors a patient's choices during this sacred time of life. The palliative care team works closely with patients and families to identify treatments that focus on maintaining the patient's comfort and quality of life. Palliative care services include:
- Helping patients and families understand the illness and what to expect, and determine individual treatment goals and plans.
- Promoting the best quality of life during the final stages of disease.
- Aggressively managing pain, nausea or other symptoms.
- Helping patients and families discuss and overcome their fears, and providing support as they face spiritual challenges during the final phases of an illness.
Palliative care is for people of any age who are in the later phases of an incurable illness. Palliative care professionals at Merit Health focus on making patients as comfortable as possible, deliver therapies to relieve pain and other symptoms, and provide support and resources. Your doctor can make a referral to palliative care at any time, and a member of the team will meet with you and your family to assess your needs.
Although palliative and hospice care are closely related, palliative care does not necessarily lead to hospice care.
In order to help you prepare, palliative care professionals can assist you in preparing advanced directives for your loved ones. By making these decisions in advance, you can ensure that others will not have to make these difficult choices later.