What is Palliative Care?
Palliative care reduces the strain of those living with serious or life-limiting illnesses that may cause increased hospitalizations and emergency room visits. Our patients receive relief from symptoms from our palliative care specialists in the privacy and comfort of their home.
You can receive palliative care any time throughout a serious illness, from the beginning of your diagnosis, on. Choosing palliative care also means that you can continue with aggressive treatments, including those intended to cure your illness, and continue seeing your primary doctor.
Is Palliative Care Right For Me?
Palliative care is the right choice for those who may still be seeking curative treatment. The focus is on improving quality of life by addressing pain, symptoms, and stressors. Our compassionate team of physicians, nurses, and medical social workers provide home visits and create a plan of care with you and your physician or provider.
Consider Palliative Care if:
- You are struggling with a life limiting condition or illness.
- You are having more frequent episodes of poorly controlled symptoms or pain.
- You are overwhelmed with multiple providers, medications, and treatments.
- You and/or your loved ones are experiencing stress related to your disease progression.
Included Services
The Palliative Care Physician oversees your plan of care and ensures you are receiving effective pain and symptom management. Our Physician will recommend and prescribe medications needed for pain, nausea, constipation, anxiety, depression, shortness of breath or other symptoms that may be interfering with your quality of life. They will provide guidance regarding potential treatment options and lead, communicate and coordinate care with the rest of the Palliative Care team.
Our Palliative Care Nurses aim to help you feel as comfortable as possible in your daily life and empower you to make treatment choices on your own terms. The nursing team will
- establish individualized goals of care that may change as an illness progresses
- monitor your symptoms and coordinate transitions of care as needed or desired from one setting to another
- counsel you and your family on next steps
- care planning and provide education about your condition, needs and progress.
- guide you and your family through end-of-life care decisions as necessary.
Living with a serious illness can be stressful on the entire family. Our Palliative Care Social Workers will assess what types of support you might need and help you access these resources. Social workers may help with education about coping with illness and treatment options, emotional support for you and your loved ones, address family caregiver resources and needs, assist you with advance care planning and identifying community resources and making referrals when appropriate.