Palliative care is the active holistic care of individuals across all ages with serious health-related suffering due to severe illness and especially of those near the end of life. It aims to improve the quality of life of patients, their families and their caregivers.
(Palliative Care Definition)
https://hospicecare.com/what-we-do/projects/consensus-based-definition-of-palliative-care/definition/#ftn1
(Palliative Care Definition)
https://hospicecare.com/what-we-do/projects/consensus-based-definition-of-palliative-care/definition/#ftn1
Palliative care:
- Includes, prevention, early identification, comprehensive assessment and management of physical issues, including pain and other distressing symptoms, psychological distress, spiritual distress and social needs. Whenever possible, these interventions must be evidence based.
- Provides support to help patients live as fully as possible until death by facilitating effective communication, helping them and their families determine goals of care.
- Is applicable throughout the course of an illness, according to the patient’s needs.
- Is provided in conjunction with disease modifying therapies whenever needed.
- May positively influence the course of illness.
- Intends neither to hasten nor postpone death, affirms life, and recognizes dying as a natural process.
- Provides support to the family and the caregivers during the patients’ illness, and in their own bereavement.
- Is delivered recognizing and respecting the cultural values and beliefs of the patient and the family.
- Is applicable throughout all health care settings (place of residence and institutions) and in all levels (primary to tertiary).
- Can be provided by professionals with basic palliative care training.
- Requires specialist palliative care with a multiprofessional team for referral of complex cases.
To achieve palliative care integration, governments should:
- Adopt adequate policies and norms that include palliative care in health laws, national health programs and national health budgets.
- Ensure that insurance plans integrate palliative care as a component of programs;
- Ensure access to essential medicines and technologies for pain relief and palliative care, including pediatric formulations.
- Ensure that palliative care is part of all health services (from community health-based programs to hospitals), that everyone is assessed, and that all staff can provide basic palliative care with specialist teams available for referral and consultation.
- Ensure access to adequate palliative care for vulnerable groups, including children and older persons.
- Engage with universities, academia and teaching hospitals to include palliative care research as well as palliative care training as an integral component of ongoing education, including basic, intermediate, specialist, and continuing education.
Source:
Redefining Palliative Care – a New Consensus-based Definition
https://www.jpsmjournal.com/article/S0885-3924(20)30247-5/fulltext?rss=yes
The resulting definition of pallaitive care is based on the SHS concept, as put forward by the Lancet Commission. Emphasizing ‘’suffering’’ as a mainstay of the new definition allows a further shift from a disease-centred conceptualization to a more person-centred approach to PC. The definition recognizes that PC should be delivered based on need rather than prognosis, is applicable in all care settings and levels, and encompasses both general and specialist care. Increasingly, SHS is replacing older concepts in population-based studies and in strategic planning of health care delivery, to identify PC need and monitor effective access for target populations, and this revised definition is a useful complement to that work.The new definition includes family members and caregivers as the unit of care, thus requiring additional resources from care services, which may be challenging to health care systems with limited resources.
This consensus-based definition follows a similar structure to the current WHO definitions and is separated into two sections: an initial concise statement and a list of bulleted and more specific components.
A third section was added after participants suggested that a set of recommendations to governments should accompany the definition. These recommendations are directed to national and local governments on how to achieve PC integration into health systems as a component of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
https://www.jpsmjournal.com/article/S0885-3924(20)30247-5/fulltext?rss=yes
Glossary – Palliative care definition
https://hospicecare.com/what-we-do/projects/consensus-based-definition-of-palliative-care/glossary/
Serious health-related suffering (SHS)
Suffering is health-related when it is associated with illness or injury of any kind. Suffering is serious when it cannot be relieved without professional intervention and when it compromises physical, social, spiritual, and/or emotional functioning.
https://pallipedia.org/serious-health-related-suffering-shs/
Serious illness
A condition that carries a high risk of mortality, negatively impacts quality of life and daily function, and/or is burdensome in symptoms, treatments, or caregiver stress. Serious illness can also be referred to as severe illness.
https://pallipedia.org/serious-illness/
Effective communication in palliative care is instrumental in the development of the therapeutic relationship that should exist between patient/families and the caring team; its importance to reduce uncertainties and clarify issues is well recognized by health personnel working in this practice area.
https://pallipedia.org/communication/Redefining palliative care – a new consensus-based definition
https://hospicecare.com/uploads/2019/9/PC%20Definition%20-%20online%20supplement%20material%20for%20IAHPC%20website.pdf
What is palliative care?
