What is Palliative Care?
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines palliative care as an approach that improves the quality of life of individuals and their families facing problems associated with life-threatening illness. It is based on a comprehensive and person-centred approach, addressing physical, psychological, social, and spiritual suffering. Palliative care aims to prevent and relieve health-related suffering and provides support to patients and their caregivers.
This normally is viewed as applying to the probable last year of life.
Specialists in palliative care can meet the person’s complex needs – physical, psychological, social, religious and/or spiritual – that their core team cannot alone. They work as part of multidisciplinary teams (MDTs), providing the service directly to the person and those important to them and/or supporting others to do so.
The main components of specialist palliative care services are:
• specialist knowledge (specialist consultant and specialist nursing services as a minimum) to assess and manage physical, psychological, social, religious and spiritual needs to reduce symptoms, suffering and distress
• supporting analysis of complex clinical decision-making challenges where medical and personal interests are finely balanced by applying relevant ethical and legal reasoning alongside clinical assessment
• providing specialist advice, support, education and training to the wider care team who are providing direct core level palliative care to the person.
