Palliative Care Everywhere!

by Cory Ingram, MD This Wednesday I look forward to a conversation on how palliative care principles and practices are able to be embedded across health systems in to various disciplines and delivery forms. Palliative care principles when applied in various clinical situations improve the quality of care for patients and families and even their longevity and care affordability. For the first time in history our society is experiencing an unprecedented medical and social situation. It is unprecedented that people are living longer, requiring more complex care, and experiencing more burdens of illness and treatment and dying more ill. The interventions employed in palliative care focus on symptom management, psychological support, ethical decision-making, coordination of care, spiritual support, prognostication, and goals of care conversations. In practice, I wonder if distillation of these principles to three main areas of focus can sustain the positive impact of palliative care. I wonder if delicate conversations, physical symptom management and non-physical symptom management embedded in all areas of our health system will improve the quality of care for seriously ill patients and their families. Are those three areas comprehensive enough? I also wonder if these three areas of focus will be embraced in various specialties like primary care? How would it work? Is it being done? What tools are needed? Are the barriers of skill, time and money able to be overcome and if so how?...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Carer Workers Tags: ingram palliative care social media The profession tweetchat twitter Source Type: blogs