What are palliative and hospice Care?
Palliative care and hospice care both focus on the comfort, care, and quality of life for individuals with a serious illness. Hospice care is a specific type of palliative care that is provided in the final weeks or months of life. Although these two forms of care are similar in some ways, they can differ as to when and where care is received, and which treatment options are available. Learn more about these two types of care to determine which may be most appropriate for you or a loved one.
What is Palliative Care?
Palliative care is interdisciplinary, which means that it involves multiple types of doctors and other care providers. These providers work together with patients, their families, and care team to ensure that the treatment plan reflects the families goals and values.
Palliative care can start as early as a person’s diagnosis or not until later in their illness, and it can occur alongside other types of treatment for the disease. In addition to improving quality of life and helping with symptoms, palliative care can help patient-families understand their choices for medical treatment. Palliative care teams offer expertise in complex symptom management and communication. The palliative care team strives to be an extra layer of support, especially as health conditions change and tough medical decisions may arise. The organized services available through palliative care may be helpful to people of any age who need it, not just end of life.
What is Hospice Care?
Like palliative care, hospice provides comprehensive comfort care as well as support for the family, but, in hospice, attempts to cure the person’s illness are stopped. Hospice care provides compassionate care for people in the last phases of incurable disease or simply aging so that they may live as fully and comfortably as possible, focusing on quality of life, on the wishes of the patient and family, and on easing distress at the end of life and the months preceding death.
Additional Resources
Dr. Sarah Friebert is the Director of Pediatric Palliative Care at Akron Children’s Hospital and she has over 20 years of experience walking alongside families of children with life-threatening, life-limiting and, sometimes, terminal conditions.
In this video, she speaks with Tiffani Goff who is the mother of three daughters and author of the book Loving Tiara. Her middle daughter, Tiara, was born with the rare genetic disease tuberous sclerosis complex. Tiara passed away at the age of 16 in 2015.
Getpalliativecare.org is a website providing clear, comprehensive palliative care information for people living with a serious illness. Key features of the site include a Palliative Care Provider Directory, a definition of palliative care, and detailed descriptions of what palliative care does and how to get it. It also provides an interactive quiz to assist you in deciding whether palliative care might be right for you or a loved one. The site is provided by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC).
CaringInfo, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, provides free resources to educate and empower patients and caregivers to make decisions about serious illness and end-of-life care and services. CaringInfo’s goal is that all people are making informed decisions about their care.
Advance decision-making is a proactive process for planning end-of-life care, often formalized as an “advance directive.” This legal document is part of estate planning. Your Advance Directive outlines a person’s wish for medical treatments and interventions before they become urgent. It’s particularly crucial for those caring for individuals with special needs.
Updated 12/11/24 (KK)