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Explore Palliative Care and Hospice Care
As your healthcare needs change, palliative care and hospice are some of the options available to help you and your family. It is important to understand that palliative and hospice care are not synonymous, though some organizations provide both.
Palliative Care
If you are not familiar with the term, palliative care is patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering, including pain and other symptoms of illness.
Palliative care specialists address not just the physical, but also intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of patients and families, making sure they have access to all the information about the disease progression and the choices ahead. A patient can receive palliative care in conjunction with other treatments or therapies.
Community-based palliative care is designed to meet the needs of seriously ill individuals and their families outside of a hospital setting.
Again, it is important to know you DO NOT have to forgo curative treatment or have a terminal diagnosis to receive palliative care.
Hospice
Hospice is a specialized kind of palliative care for those facing a life-limiting illness, their families and their caregivers. It is provided when a cure is not possible. During hospice care, the primary goal is to have the best quality of life possible. The hospice team:
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Addresses the physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs of patients and their families;
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Provides care in the patient’s home or in a home-like setting;
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Concentrates on making patients as free of pain and troublesome symptoms and as comfortable as possible so they can make the most of the time that remains;
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Considers helping family members an essential part of its mission;
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Believes the quality of life is as important as length of life.