INPATIENT PALLIATIVE CARE PROGRAMS

what is it?

• Interdisciplinary medical specialty that focuses on preventing and relieving suffering and on best quality of life for patients and their families.

Primary tenets

Tenets of Palliative care

• Symptom management
• Establishing goals of care
• Consistent and sustained communication
• Support
• Coordination

AIM

To relieve suffering in all stages of disease and is not limited to end of life care.

Defining Palliative Care

WHO definition:

• "An approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual."

Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services

• “Palliative care means patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering. Palliative care throughout the continuum of illness involves addressing physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs and facilitating patient autonomy, access to information, and choice”

Center to advanced palliative care

• “Specialized medical care for people with serious illnesses…focused on providing patients with relief from the symptoms, pain and stress of a serious illness — whatever the diagnosis. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family. Palliative care is provided by a team of doctors, nurses and other specialists who work together with a patient’s other doctors to provide an extra layer of support. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness and can be provided along with curative treatment”

when?

• Palliative care can be offered to patients at ANY TIME along the trajectory of any type of serious illness; even concurrent with restorative and life-prolonging therapies.

who?

• Anyone with a serious illness, regardless of life expectancy

cost?

• Palliative care services
• Hospice model

Care team

• The team consists of doctors, nurses, social workers and chaplains.
• The team can be part of different organizations, like hospitals, hospiceand health care clinics

where?

• Home
• Hospital
• Long-term care facility
• Ambulatory setting

models of delivery

hospital based

Inpatient palliative care units
Consultation services

non-hospital based

Ambulatory Palliative Care Programs

Hospice model

Meiter, D. & McCormick, E. (2015, February 20). Benefits, services and models of subspecialty palliative care. Retrieved May 6, 2015 from www.uptodate.com/contents/benefits-services-and-models-of-subspecialty-pall...