Enhancing quality of life for patients and their families
What Is Palliative Care?
Living with a life-threatening, progressive or incurable illness can present many challenges for patients and their families. Palliative care is a team approach to medicine focused on preventing or relieving pain and other physical, emotional and/or spiritual distress that can accompany serious illness. It draws on a range of resources and professional expertise and is designed to work in partnership with the patient’s primary treating physician to ensure complete, well-coordinated care.
When Is Palliative Care Needed?
Palliative care can be provided at any stage of an illness, regardless of the patient’s life expectancy. In fact, accessing it as early as possible—even upon diagnosis of the condition—can help patients avoid, reduce or better prepare for difficulties that may result from the illness or treatment aimed at curing, reversing or slowing the disease. This makes it different from hospice, a form of palliative care exclusively for terminally ill patients at the last stages of life.
Who Can Benefit From Palliative Care?
Palliative care is appropriate for any patient diagnosed with a chronic, progressive or life-threatening illness—for example, heart, kidney, liver or respiratory disease; cancer; multiple sclerosis; stroke; severe arthritis; dementia; or a neurological disorder.
About CentraState’s Palliative Care Services
Palliative care services at CentraState Medical Center are coordinated by a dedicated palliative care nurse and are designed to optimize the quality of life for patients and their families. They include:
- Pain and symptom management to achieve maximum patient comfort;
- Therapy to maintain and improve patients’ ability to perform the tasks of daily living;
- Emotional and spiritual support for patients and their caregivers;
- Education and support groups to empower patients and their families;
- Complementary therapies to help ease stress and enhance comfort;
- Guidance on insurance verification and approval;
- Help with planning for discharge from the hospital—such as information about options, recommendations for ongoing care that enhances quality of life, coordination of care, and communication of the patient’s needs and goals to chosen providers;
- Assistance with end-of-life planning and decisions; and
- Help with transitioning to hospice if appropriate.
Accessing Palliative Care Services
Patients need a referral from their primary care physician to receive palliative care services. For more information, call CentraState's palliative care nurse at (732) 303-5181, or ext. 5181 from within the hospital.
