What is palliative care?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

•  It is the holistic care for patients who have an illness without a cure so aiming to provide patients and their family with the best quality of life possible by giving medications for pain, spiritual, psychological and mental support.

 

• Palliative care itself does not prolong or shorten the life of patients. It aims to allow the patient to live as active as possible before death and providing relief from pain or distress.

 

• Affirms that life and death is a normal process everyone will eventually  go through.

 

 

• Palliative care can be utilised early on in the course of the disease in combination with other treatments such as chemotherapy to prolong the patient’s life

 

 

• It  provides  support to the family during the time the patient is coping with the illness and during the bereavement period.

 

 

•  Although it is cancer patients who mainly benefit from palliative care, patients with other diseases such as AIDs, neurological diseases e.g. motor neurone disease have also benefited.