Best Palliative Care Hospital for Incurable Patients With Life Limiting Diseases

Palliative care is a specialised supportive medical care for people with incurable, life threatening diseases and their families. It enables them to live as well as possible, through their lifetime, by improving their quality of life. It intends to give patients a relatively pain free, comfortable, self reliant, productive and dignified life.

How Does Palliative Care Help?

• Provides Relief from pain and other distressing symptoms
• Affirms life and enhances its quality which may also positively influence the course of illness
• Integrates psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care
• Offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible, throughout their life with dignity.
• Uses team approach to address the needs of the patients and their families including bereavement counseling, if indicated.
• Starts early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life.
• Uses only those investigations which are required to understand and manage distressing clinical complications
• Integrates palliative care with oncology, cardiology, pulmonology, neurology and other relevant specialties for comprehensive patient management.
• Trains staff, care givers and volunteers to provide focused care.

Principles of Palliative care

• Palliative care is patient, family and care givers centric with focus on care and not curing the disease.
• It is based on accurate assessment of physical, psychological, spiritual and social needs of the patients and their families.
• It is evidence based, clinically acceptable, safe and effective
• It is integrated and coordinated with oncology and other specialities / super specialities.

Who needs Palliative Care

All patients with chronic, progressive life threatening conditions like

• Cancer
• End stage organ failure like
• Chronic obstructive lung diseases
• End stage heart failure
• Chronic kidney diseases
• End stage liver diseases
• Advanced neurological diseases

Emergencies that require Palliative Care

Choking •  Hypoglycaemia • Medicinal opioid overdose • Superior vena cave obstruction • Spinal Cord Compression • Hypercalcemia  •  Haemorrhage •  Acute Severe Pain • Over Whelming Distress • Surgical and Neurological Emergencies  • Pathological Fractures • Chemo Extravasation • Cord Compression.

Who Provides Palliative Care at Palliative Care Hospital

For decades family physicians and family members had been providing Palliative Care under the supervision of oncologists and other specialists. Most specialists and super specialists are focused on their specialy or organ of training to cure the disease. They cannot devote time to understand the other psychological, spiritual, social and financial needs of incurable patients. Therefore Palliative Care specialists have to be involved. Most of the Palliative Care these days is provided by the critical care specialists with fellowship in Palliative care and experience of managing pain.

Medical council of India recognised Palliative Care as a speciality in 2010. In 2012 Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai started M.D Palliative Care followed by Gujrat Cancer Institute and AIIMS. In 2021, Sawai Mansingh Medical College, Jaipur and Kasturba Medical College, Manipal have also been allotted 2 seats each in M.D Palliative Care. Similarly DNB Palliative Care has also been started in 2021. Hopefully within the next decade more and more dedicated Palliative Care Centre will come up to address the needs of ever increasing number of people requiring Palliative Care.

To fulfil the gap between the demand and supply, Dharamshila accepted the challenge to start North India's first, stand alone, integrated and dedicated Palliative Care Hospital to provide holistic, multidisciplinary Supportive and Palliative Care at Dharamshila Rahat Medical Centre.