Palliative Care

Palliative care is a concern that up rise or improve the value of life of patients and also their families who are faced with the problems concerning with life-threatening illness or diseases, through the deterrence and relief of suffering through early detection and faultless appraisal and cure of pain and other problems, whether physical, psychosocial or spiritual.

Also, we can define Palliative care as is a concern with health matter that helps relieve and also avert the distress of patients. Palliative care is given to a patient with a serious or life threatening illness regardless of whether the disease will be cured or not (Meier et al 2010). This is to assist the patient reduce the side effects that arise because of illness. Palliative care is not something new. It has exited ever since the old days. Mostly, Palliative care is for patients with very serious illnesses or life threatening diseases so as to relieve the patient from the pain, symptoms, and also stresses that result because of the serious illness.

Palliative care affirms life and prepares one mentally and makes him or her understand dying is a normal process. It intends neither to speed up nor to put off death; it integrates the mental and spiritual aspects of patient care; gives an encouragement system to assist patients live as aggressively as possible; gives an encouragement system that assist the family cope; uses a group approach to tackle the wishes of patients and their families and will improve the quality of life; Medicines that are given during the palliative care process is totally different from the medicines that one is given in a hospital for a particular disease. This is so because these medicines can be given to any patient regardless of the disease one is suffering from that is Palliative medicine given to a patient with a curable disease and a patient with a chronic disease is the same it does not vary since the two have the different disease. The two patients here are treated for the suffering they are undergoing, not the type of disease that they have. Palliative care is also given to any suffering patient regardless of age that is whether the patient is a child, youth or a mature person he or she can receive palliative care when suffering. Palliative care is appropriate early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that will assist to prolong life like chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

A palliative drug uses a multidisciplinary approach to patient care depending on the efforts of nurses, social workers, psychologists, physicians, pharmacists, chaplains among other related health specialists to come up with a way to relieve any suffering that the patient is going through in his or her life. By this approach, the palliative care squad can now solve the emotional, social, physical and spiritual concern that may result to illness. The main purpose to providing this care to the patient is to improve inferiority of life for both the patient and his or her family.

How the palliative care improves the quality of life

Patient with serious and chronic illnesses such as HIV and AIDs, kidney failure, cancer, heart failure, lungs infections, cardiac disease like congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) among other diseases needs to get palliative care because it concentrates on stress, pain, fatigue, difficult to sleep, shortness to breath, constipation, lack of appetite, and also nausea which in most cases these are the difficulties patients go through. Palliative care helps the patient gain strength to cope with life. It improves the patient’ ability to accept medical treatment and have a more control over your care by raising communication to be able to know your selection for healing.

A partnership of the patient specialists and the family Palliative care involves team work. The people involved include nurses, social work palliative care specialists and also doctors. Also, people like nutritionists, chaplains and massage therapists may be part of the team too. The reason why palliative care involves a big team with different specialists in different sectors is that the patient has a range of condition which needs different attention (Emanuel & Librach, 2011). This may vary from controlling the physical sings in patients receiving cancer treatment, to treating stress in patients with early disease, taking care of patients in their last hours. Most of the work includes assisting patients with difficult or severe physical, psychological, social, and spiritual problems or issues.

In case, a patient dies because of any of these chronic or curative illnesses, most sanatorium organizations offer grief counseling to the patient’s partner that is the husband or wife or also the family at large because they are the people who affected. The team spends a lot of time as much as possible with you and your family. They become a partner (a good friend) with you, your family and your other doctors. They encourage both you and relatives every move of the way, not only by managing your symptoms but also by assisting you to understand your curative options and goals (Emanuel & Librach, 2011). Working together with your main doctor, the palliative care team provides Emotional and spiritual support to not only you but also your family too; secure communication; help to navigate the health care system; expert management of pain and other symptoms; guidance with difficult and complex treatment choices and talking to your doctor. If found with a serious illness or maybe our loved one is diagnosed with one, you can benefit from palliative care that if you speak to your doctor and request for it though at the time, you may be needed to bring swith the handout because few doctors know about palliative care and benefit one gets.

Medications and treatments that relieve symptoms, but don’t has a healing effect on the treated illness or cause is said to have the palliative effect. For example using morphine to treat the pain one is going after breaking his or her leg. Caregivers, both family and volunteers are important to the palliative care system. Caregivers and patients often form lasting friendships over the line of care. As a result, caregivers may get themselves in different emotional and physical damage. Opportunities for caregiver interval are some of the services hospitals give to promote caregiver well-being. Interval may last a few hours up to some few days where the later being done usually by placing the patient in a nursing home or in-patient hospital for some time.

The main way to provide or give an efficient palliative care is by giving a secure way for the patient to communicate their physical and psychological distress that is by saying whatever they feel. Refusing an individual and their assistant system the opportunity to discover psychological or spiritual concerns are just as destructive as forcing them to deal with issues that doesn’t involve them. The method to assist patient anxiety in palliative care settings includes cognitive methods, drug therapy, and counseling and relaxation therapy. Palliative pets also have played a role in this final category. Pets also can get palliative care when they die. For those who love animals getting close to their death, contact with the familiar positive involvement with pets assists to normalize the hospital environment and decrease anxiety. Even for patients whose cognitive abilities got destroyed by sicknesses such as Alzheimer’s disease, A research done by clinic show that the presence of a therapy dog improved nonverbal communication seen through increases in smiles, physical warmth, looks, and tactile contact.