When facing a serious illness, treatment plans must carefully balance the steps needed to actively find a cure with ensuring that nobody suffers unnecessarily.
This is where palliative care is so vital, as it provides comfort, reduces pain and increases quality of life for your loved one as much as possible.
The ultimate focus of palliative care is to prevent pain and anguish, but because it is not focused on finding a cure, the term is often used interchangeably with hospice care.
Whilst the two are similar, and can sometimes be seen as the same approach to care at two different stages of life, hospice care and palliative care are quite different, with some differences in particular highlighting where one or the other might be more appropriate for a loved one.
Does Palliative Care Mean That A Condition Is Terminal?
Because palliative care does not intend to treat or cure a disease, there is a misconception that it is a treatment only used when there is little chance of treatment.
This is often incorrect; palliative care is often used alongside other forms of curative treatment, sometimes to help with treatment or to improve a person’s quality of life during it.
For example, palliative care is often used to minimise the side effects of treatment and help to provide comfort, coordinating medical treatment and social care.
By contrast, hospice care typically focuses on late-stage terminal illnesses after curative treatments have ceased, and focuses exclusively on ensuring that any time left is spent as comfortably as possible.
When Is Palliative Care Offered?
Palliative care can be offered as soon as a diagnosis is provided and will often change during the course of treatment to meet the needs of your loved one as well as adapt to changing treatments.
Hospice care, on the other hand, tends to only begin once other treatments end, which is typically within the last months of a person’s life.