What is Palliative (Hospice) Care?
Palliative Care tackles both the physical and the psychological aspects of the end of life. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), palliative care is “an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem 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.” Those that work in hospices are palliative care specialists. The WHO goes on to list the following to describe hospice care: • Provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms • Affirms life and regards dying as a normal process • Intends neither to hasten or postpone death • Integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care • Offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death • Offers a support system to help the family cope during the patients illness
