What is palliative care?

Palliative care is coordinated care by specialist doctors, nurses, volunteers, social workers and pastoral care workers. The goal of palliative care is to provide care and support so that people with serious illness can live as fully and comfortably as possible.

Palliative care:

• combines medical, nursing, psychological, social and spiritual care so that people with cancer may come to terms with what is happening to them
• provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms
• regards dying as a natural event and does not prolong treatment when it is no longer beneficial
• does not include deliberate ending of life
• offers support for families and friends during a person’s illness and in bereavement
• can be provided in the home, a hospital or a hospice setting.

If you are not linked in with a palliative care service and would like to be, speak to the doctor or nurse. In Victoria, each palliative care organisation covers a particular geographic area, so you will be visited by the organisation that serves your area. All care may be provided by different people from one service, or by district nurses in conjunction with a palliative care service.

With the palliative care nurse, you will choose which palliative care workers will be involved and how often they will visit. This will vary according to how you feel, what problems you have and how your carers are managing.

Palliative care services work with the local doctor and doctors and nurses from the hospital or clinic—they do not take over all the care and treatment decisions. Palliative care services often can include visits from a trained volunteer support worker.
If you wish, the palliative care service can be responsible for coordinating all your needs, including medical, practical, social, emotional and spiritual needs.

In general, palliative care services are free. There may be a charge for hire of some equipment for home care.

A hospice is a place that provides day care and longer-term residential palliative care services. It is a place that has hospital facilities but a homelike atmosphere, where specially-trained staff care for people with life-threatening illnesses. A person may go into a hospice to have pain or other worrying symptoms brought under control, to give the person caring for them a break, or to spend their last days or weeks in a suitable environment. Many people go into a hospice for a short time and then return to their home.

More information

For more information about palliative care, visit:

Palliative Care Victoria
www.pallcarevic.asn.au/public/index.html

Or download this information sheet on palliative care, produced by The Cancer Council NSW.

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