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Posts Tagged ‘Palliative Care’

Living as Well as Possible as Long as Possible. By Our February Student Pharmacist, Doug Gugel-Bryant.

Pretend you are in an auditorium attending a guest speaker lecture. The room is dimly lit with the stage bright with spot lights. The speaker comes out and addresses the audience with an opening question: “Show of hands, how many people here would like to suffer?”

After hearing this question, do you raise your hand?

I venture to say that, in this metaphorical situation, no one in the audience would raise their hand.

It’s almost a universal belief that no one wants to suffer. And yet, we live in a world where all we see and hear are stories about the suffering of others. It’s almost like there isn’t a single place that isn’t plagued by suffering.

One place we tend to forget that has daily suffering is any healthcare setting. Day in and day out, people enter and leave hospitals and clinics suffering. We make it our effort to relieve the symptoms of others with the hopes of curing medical problems. But medical advances can only do so much. What’s that leave us with?

Enter, Palliative Care.

Palliative Care is a specialized form of medicine for individuals who have a serious medical illness. The symptoms and stresses of the illness are the target of Palliative Care. The ultimate goal: improve the quality of life of both the patient AND the family. This goal can be achieved with a Palliative Care team working with the patient and family.

Palliative-tree

Who makes up a Palliative Care team?

A multidisciplinary team (meaning many different healthcare providers across all kinds of specialties) includes physicians, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, chaplains, and anyone else who wants to alleviate suffering. If you are lucky, your Palliative Care team will be an “interdisciplinary” team, meaning everyone works together at the same time to figure out how best to help their patients.

I want to make this point of order. PALLIATIVE CARE DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN DYING.

There is a misconception that if Palliative Care is consulted then it means death is around the corner. In reality, if Palliative Care is called to the case then you can expect an increase in your quality of life. That mentality is shared with Hospice.

Hospice is the care associated with a health condition that limits life to six months or less. Palliative Care sprouted from Hospice and shares similarities in philosophies of care, but they are distinctly different.

Pallative-vs-Hospice-Venn-Diagram-3

With these misconceptions comes a miscommunication of what Palliative Care stands for and can do for patients. Compiling lists from various authors, here’s what those who are in Palliative Care and who have experienced its healing want you to know:

  • Palliative Care is appropriate at any stage of an illness: As I stated before, it’s assumed that Palliative Care is meant for end-of-life care. I’ve personally seen Palliative Care give a woman back her ability to breathe. If that hadn’t happened, she would surely have died. But Palliative Care got her back on her feet and out the door. Palliative Care doesn’t always mean dying.
  • Palliative Care isn’t only for cancer, but is beneficial for ANY chronic illness: It’s easy to think that Palliative Care is for cancer patients. If I asked people “which illness causes the most suffering?” most would probably think of cancer. But remember, that every health condition can cause suffering. That means Palliative Care can help with anything as long as a symptom exists that is decreasing a patient’s quality of life. Starting early with Palliative Care can give someone’s life back when there’s still life to be lived.
  • Palliative Care manages total pain: Pain is thought to be this obnoxious feeling that causes discomfort. Pain is more than that. Pain is physical, but it is also social, psychological, and spiritual. The summation of all of these make up a patient’s total pain. Palliative Care treats all of them together and wants to get rid of total pain.
  • Palliative Care can treat many symptoms that can be impacting a patient: You name it, Palliative Care attempts to alleviate it. Typical symptoms might be nausea, fatigue, shortness of breath, and pain. But anything that can be affecting the quality of life of the patient or their family is what Palliative Care wants to treat.
  • Palliative Care also focuses on treating emotional symptoms too: Suffering is not only physically exhausting, but emotionally exhausting, too. Those emotional stresses can add to the overall suffering. It doesn’t matter if the emotions are related to the illness, the course of the illness, or are related to spiritual questions that need answered. Palliative Care wants to deal with those problems along with the physical symptoms being experienced.
  • Early involvement with Palliative Care gives life: I’ve said this multiples times throughout this posting, but it is worth repeating: Palliative Care doesn’t always mean dying. That’s because its goal is to give a quality of life back to patients and their families. This is supported with research. A study on patients with non-small cell lung cancer who were treated by a Palliative Care team lived almost three months longer than patients who didn’t have Palliative Care on board. The goal of Palliative Care is to alleviate suffering. Without suffering, patients can go back to living their life as best as they can.

Pretend you are back in the auditorium with the guest speaker. The speaker asks a second question: “If I had the answer to make your suffering go away, would you let me help you?”

If you answer “yes” then this is the chance to let Palliative Care make a difference for you or your loved ones. No one should have to suffer from their illnesses.

To watch a video on Palliative Care, click on the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/lDHhg76tMHc

References

  1. What Is Palliative Care? Get Palliative Care. 2017. Available at: https://getpalliativecare.org/whatis/. Accessed February 12, 2017.
  2. Top 10 Things to Know About Palliative Care – The Silver Pen. The Silver Pen. 2017. Available at: http://www.thesilverpen.com/breast-cancer-information-facts/top-10-things-to-know-about-palliative-care/. Accessed February 12, 2017.
  3. Strand J, Kamdar M, Carey E. Top 10 Things Palliative Care Clinicians Wished Everyone Knew About Palliative Care. Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2013;88(8):859-865. doi:10.1016/j.mayocp.2013.05.020.