Technical Report Series 804, Cancer Pain and Palliative Care. Palliative care is an interdisciplinary therapeutic model that focuses on the comprehensive management of the physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs of patients with progressive incurable illnesses and their families. The model applies throughout the course of the illness, and includes an array of interventions that are intended to maintain the quality of life, or attenuate the suffering, of the patient and family. As death approaches, palliative care must intensify and ensure that comfort is a priority, practical needs are addressed, psychosocial and spiritual distress is managed, values and decisions are respected, and opportunities are available for growth and resolution. Palliative care is both an approach to patient care that should be routinely integrated with life-prolonging therapies and a growing practice specialty for highly trained physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, and others.
Palliative medicine is the medical specialty dedicated to excellence in palliative care.
Palliative care specialists typically work in teams and usually are needed when the disease is advanced, life expectancy is short, and problems become complex and more urgent. In practice, these problems most often relate to uncontrolled symptoms, conflicted or unclear goals of care, distress related to the process of dying, and increasing family burden. The definition of palliative care has much in common with hospice. In the United States, however, palliative care is evolving in a way that goes well beyond the American version of hospice. Palliative care aims to address the physical, psychosocial, and spiritual concerns that contribute to both the quality of life and quality of dying for patients with life-threatening illnesses at any phase of the disease.