Palliative Care for Movement Disorders

We describe how a palliative care approach can empower clinicians, patients, and families to reduce common sources of suffering and optimize quality of life. This field recognizes the importance of primary palliative care (palliative skills useful for any clinician caring for persons caring for serious illness) as a foundation of the palliative care approach and complementary to specialist palliative care. In this article, we will focus on primary palliative care skills for movement disorder specialists including providing a diagnosis and prognosis with compassion, discussing goals of care, complex symptom management, caregiver support, spiritual and emotional well-being, and referral to hospice and specialist palliative care.SummaryA palliative care approach complements other efforts in movement disorder care. Research is needed to evaluate and develop therapeutic interventions and models of care applying a palliative care approach.

Source: Current Treatment Options in Neurology - February 21, 2018 Category: Neurology Source Type: research