5 Surprising things you should know about the palliative care

Palliative care is specialized medical care for people living with a serious illness. This type of care is focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stresses of the illness. The aim is to improve the quality of life for both the patient and the family members.

1. It’s More Than Just Pain Relief
Palliative care focuses on helping a person to be comfortable by addressing all physical symptoms like Severe Pain, breathlessness, fatigue, pressure symptoms, bed sores lymphoedema, bleeding, difficulty in eating, swallowing, immobility, jaundice etc. It also address the Psychological Symptoms like Disruption of sensitive balance between the mind and body, unpredictability of future, depression, difficulty in finding someone confidential to talk to, loneliness, getting little support from the family & others, fear of physical suffering & death, stigma due to disfigurement, loss of self-esteem & suicidal thoughts.

2. It’s Delivered By A Multidisciplinary Team
It is provided by multidisciplinary team consisting of Pain & Palliative care Specialists, Psychologists, Psychiatrists, deaddiction specialists, physiotherapists, trained palliative care nurses, social workers, and spiritual teachers, (as per requirement) to ensure holistic healing.

3. Palliative Care Includes The Patient’s Family
Like Patient, family members also go through emotional, psychosocial and spiritual problems which palliative care addresses. They are counselled for their problems, provided respite care and bereavement counseling. They are also trained to prevent, identify and report anticipated problems like paralysis.

4. It’s Not Limited To Hospice
Palliative Care treats the symptoms to provide relief (inspite of the fact that, it cannot cure the disease). It starts with diagnosis and continues all through the life. Hospice Care, When it is clear to the entire treating team that no treatment is benefitting the patient, all treatment is stopped and Hospice Care is started. Objective of hospice care is to relieve pain and provide maximum comfort with love, compassion and dedication. There is no intention to improve the life span.

5. It’s Available At Any Time During Illness
Palliative care is not a new concept. However, these days people are rigid about going for something that is not highly preferred. If the elderly person is suffering from advanced-stage cancer, Chronic obstruction lung diseases, End stage organ failure like heart, kidney , stroke, paralysis etc.

To fulfill gap between the need and availability of palliative care in Delhi, Dharamshila Cancer Foundation And Research Centre, commissioned Dharamshila Rahat Medical Centre (DRMC) in June 2022. DRMC is North India’s first standalone, Multidisciplinary, holistic supportive and Palliative Care Centre. Dharamshila Rahat Medical Centre also provides Holistic Palliative care to patients suffering from all other serious life-threatening diseases..