For Providers
Benefits of Palliative Care for Your Patients
Referring a patient with a serious or chronic illness for palliative care can have a profound impact on their quality of life and well-being. Palliative care can help your patients manage pain and other symptoms caused by their illness, including any side effects caused by treatment. Being able to address these symptoms — often at home — can improve a patient’s quality of life and increase their comfort. It can also help reduce unnecessary hospital visits.
But in addition to focusing on your patients’ physical needs, palliative care can offer a range of other benefits.
Education Opportunities
Palliative care provides a place where patients and their families can feel comfortable asking additional questions. This continued opportunity for education can help them better understand a prognosis and how an illness might progress.
Emotional and Spiritual Support
As a patient navigates their illness, they will undoubtedly deal with changing emotions and consider their own goals and wishes for the future. The counseling component of palliative care gives them a place to explore these emotions, and chaplains and social workers can help improve the emotional well-being of patients.
Families, too, can receive support. Being a caregiver or loved one of someone with a serious illness can be difficult, but palliative care can provide resources to lessen those burdens.
Advance Care Planning
Although patients may still be pursuing curative treatments, receiving palliative care can help them have potentially difficult conversations about future care. One study found that 30 percent of cancer patients receiving both treatment and palliative care had discussions about their end-of-life wishes. Only 14 percent of patients receiving standard care did the same.
At Agape Care, we work closely with physicians to create a comprehensive care plan for patients. For additional information about palliative care and the services we provide, please contact us today.