What is palliative care?

Palliative care is a type of care for people who have a serious illness. It's different from care to cure your illness, called curative treatment. Palliative care provides an extra layer of support that can improve your quality of life—not just in your body, but also in your mind and spirit. Sometimes palliative care is combined with curative treatment.

The kind of care you get depends on what you need. Your goals guide your care. You can get both palliative care and care to treat your illness. You don't have to choose one or the other.

Palliative care can help you manage symptoms, pain, or side effects from treatment. It may help you and those close to you better understand your illness, talk more openly about your feelings, or decide what treatment you want or don't want. It can also help you communicate better with your doctors, nurses, family, and friends.

Palliative care: This treatment helps you feel better physically, emotionally, and spiritually while doctors also treat your illness. Your care may include pain relief, counseling, or nutrition advice.

Hospice care: Again, the goal of this type of care is to help you feel better. And it can help you get the most out of the time you have left. But you no longer get treatment to try to cure your illness.

The goal of good pain management is to have the least possible pain with the fewest side effects. Because each person responds to pain medicines in a different way, it may take more than one try to find the best medicines for you.

If your pain isn't severe, nonprescription medicines may help relieve it. These include acetaminophen and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as aspirin and ibuprofen.

If these medicines don't help, your doctor may prescribe medicines called opioids. Opioids may be used with other medicines, such as NSAIDs or antidepressants, to treat your pain.

Good communication is a large part of palliative care. Your palliative care team will encourage you to listen to your feelings and to talk about what is most important to you. They will also try to explain things to you in ways you can understand. Then they will work with your primary care doctor to make sure that your care is meeting your goals, such as managing symptoms or making plans for the future.

You might talk about many things during a palliative care visit, such as:

• Treatment.
• Pain and treatment side effects.
• Emotional and social challenges.
• Spiritual concerns.
• Hospice care.
• Advance directives.