Many health care workers believe that palliative care is the "soft option" adopted when "active" therapy stops
- → palliative care, addressing all the patient’s physical and psychosocial problems, is active therapy
Palliative care has in the past been regarded as the care employed when all avenues of treatment for the underlying disease are exhausted and further active medical treatment considered inappropriate.
Palliative care should be initiated when a patient becomes symptomatic of active, progressive, incurable disease
- → it should never be withheld until such time as all modalities of treatment of the underlying disease have been exhausted
- → it is active therapy that is complementary to active treatment of the underlying disease
- → It should be integrated in a seamless manner with other aspects of care
- → a holistic approach to care, encompassing all aspects of a patient’s suffering and which is a prerequisite for successful palliative care, is often lacking in modern disease-orientated medicine.
[Diagrams reproduced with permission from Woodruff R. Palliative Medicine. 4th edition. Oxford University Press, 2004]
Source:
The IAHPC Manual of Palliative Care 3rd Edition
https://hospicecare.com/what-we-do/publications/manual-of-palliative-care/
