What you need to know about palliative care for seniors
Suppose you've been looking for information about care methods that can help the senior in your life live more comfortably with their medical condition. In that case, you might have come across the term ‘palliative care’ several times. If your senior loved one is living with a serious illness, then palliative care can offer much-needed support. The Foothills Home Services team is here to help you find out what you need to know about palliative care and how it can help your senior loved one deal with living with a serious medical condition.
What does ‘palliative care’ mean
Palliative care is a medical approach that aims to improve the quality of life of patients who are facing problems associated with life-threatening illnesses. Through the early identification, correct assessment and treatment of problems (including pain and other physical, psychosocial, and spiritual problems), palliative care prevents and relieves suffering.
The families of people receiving advanced care can be profoundly affected by the challenges of the illness. Palliative care offers support to the family of a person living with a serious illness too. The person living with the medical condition and their family is the primary focus of palliative care. Still, the patient’s doctors and nurses benefit too from knowing the patient’s care needs are being met, their suffering is being reduced, and their quality of life is being improved.
Here’s what palliative care includes
Palliative care covers various services delivered by professionals such as therapists, Health Care Aids, nurses, physicians and pharmacists. A palliative care team works with the patient, their family, and their other doctors to provide support aimed at enhancing the quality of life of the patient and their family too.
Who is involved in the treatment and the specific services to be delivered will depend on the person’s needs and required care level. It’s worth noting that many people receive treatment for their illnesses simultaneously as they receive palliative care, so starting palliative care doesn’t mean stopping curative treatment.
The earlier palliative care is started, the better. It can be started from the point of diagnosis and be used at every stage of illness. Palliative care can be used to provide additional support to people suffering from cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Dementia and many other conditions. Palliative care may include:
Help with understanding the disease and diagnosis
A palliative care team knows how to alleviate the pain caused by your loved one’s illness, but they also specialize in relieving the stress an illness causes the person receiving care and their family. Palliative care specialists can help you interpret the medical information received from doctors and understand what it means for your loved one and your family to alleviate some of the stress around facing the condition your loved one is living with.
Assistance with making medical decisions
A palliative care team is there to guide you throughout your loved one’s illness; they can help clarify your treatment options and goals. Your senior loved one’s palliative care providers can use their expertise and experience to help your family make decisions around feeding difficulties, infection, hospitalization, the best place for the senior in your life to receive care, and more.
Receiving palliative care doesn’t mean someone stops seeing their other physicians. Instead, palliative care providers work together with a patient’s doctors to improve the patient’s quality of life. On top of giving helpful medical advice, a palliative care team can help coordinate care and improve communication between a patient, their family, and their doctors.
Symptom management
Pain is a common reason for palliative care referral. When living with a serious illness, pain can be caused by several things: the illness itself, treatments (like surgery), treatment side effects, and even the other medical conditions a person may have been living with for a while. However, pain isn’t the only symptom that qualifies someone for palliative care. Palliative care referrals are even made for non-physical symptoms that impact the quality of life, such as anxiety, depression, and spiritual distress.
Palliative care can help patients live more comfortably despite the pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, depression, nausea or vomiting, difficulty sleeping, and many other symptoms they might face. A palliative care provider will help manage the symptoms your senior loved one is facing by prescribing medications and treatments and offering emotional support.
Palliative care and hospice care: what’s the difference?
A big misconception about palliative care is that it’s the same as hospice care, and sometimes, people confuse palliative care with hospice care. With both types of care focused on providing comfort and reducing stress while improving a person’s quality of life, it’s easy to understand how that mix-up might happen. Still, palliative care and hospice care are actually different.
Palliative care is appropriate at any stage of a serious illness and can be received throughout the illness alongside curative treatment. Hospice care, on the other hand, is about end-of-life care. It is usually given when treatment for an illness has stopped working, and a person needs support in the last months of their life.
Foothills Home Services can help with your palliative care concerns
Is palliative care the right choice for your loved one? Our senior care experts can help you figure that out. You can contact the Foothills Home Services team for advice, information, and help concerning your senior loved one’s condition. Where palliative care looks like the best course of action, we’ll assess to better understand the needs of your senior loved one and put together a personalized care plan to address all of those needs.
Your loved one is in great hands with the Foothills Home Services team. Our founder, Sylvia McKinlay, has been constructing the perfect approach to palliative care in Alberta for the last 20 years. Our highly-trained and dedicated caregivers provide palliative care as part of the private home care services we offer in Calgary and the surrounding areas. For more information about how the senior in your life can benefit from our palliative care services, reach out to the Foothills Home Services team.
