A common misconception about palliative care is that it is only for those who are close to death. Going through some old papers and magazines the other night, I came across an article I saved from the April 2022 issue of my local TPT/PBS magazine. Known primarily for its TV guide, promotional pieces on its programming, and ads from its sponsers, the TPT/PBS magazine also has one or two stories of interest in each issue. One of these stories in the April 2022 issue focused on palliative care, which of course caught my attention, especially as it addressed the aforementioned common misconception.
I’ll let Nora Macaluso, the author of this article, take it from here.
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Palliative Care is Not Just for the Dying
By Nora Macaluso
Palliative care can provide relief to people with severe, but not necessarily life-ending, health conditions. But often patients – and their doctors – don’t realize they can take advantage of a team-based treatment approach that includes doctors, nurse practitioners, social workers, chaplains, and community support.
“The big misconception about palliative care in general is that you need to be dying to get it,” said Dr. Andrew Esch, a palliative care specialist for the Center to Advance Palliative Care in Tampla, Florida.
The pandemic has helped counter that view as physicians see the benefits to people living with COVID-19 and their families. A palliative care team aims to take a holistic view of the patient’s world rather than focusing solely on treating the primary condition.
Dr. John Mulder, of Spring Lake, Michigan, executive director pf palliative care training center Trillium Institute, uses “life-defining” or “life-altering” to identify conditions that might benefit from palliative care.
“Many, many individuals as they navigate their lives are going to be diagnosed with something that is going to forever change them, and it’s going to impact their longevity, impact their quality of life, and can place some burden of suffering upon them,” he said.
“What we do in palliative care is acknowledge the fact that we have something we can’t fix,” Mulder continued. “It might be modifiable, it might be manageable, but we can’t fix it.”
People with cancer, for example, can rely on the symptom-based approach of palliative care to build their strength so they’re better able to withstand chemotherapy, he said. People with conditions like multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease can also benefit, as can those with Alzheimer’s disease.
As Esch sees it, one of the real values of palliative care is “coordinating care and communicating with the patient’s family and other clinicians” so “we’re not doing things in silos,” he said.
“Palliative care takes the lead and makes it so the patient feels they have four doctors and nurse practitioners taking care of them, and they have four of them talking to each other.”
– Nora Macaluso
April 2022
April 2022
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• From the Palliative/Spiritual Care Bookshelf – Part I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX
• Arthur Kleinman on the “Soul of Care”
• Chaplaincy: A Ministry of Welcome
• Interfaith Chaplaincy: Meeting People Where They're At
• Spirituality and the Healthcare Setting
• World Hospice and Palliative Care Day
• In the Telling – and the Listening – There Is Healing
• Resilience and Hope
• George Yancy on the “Unspoken Reality of Death”
• “Call Upon Those You Love”
• Yahia Lababidi: “Poetry Is How We Pray Now”
• The Calm Before the Storm
• Out and About – Spring 2020
• A Pandemic Year
• Out and About – Autumn 2021
• Difficult Choices
• On the 2nd Anniversary of the Coronavirus Pandemic, Words of Gratitude and Hope
One potentially scary practical question for patients and their families is whether and when insurance coverage for palliative care becomes more limited because a given claim is not considered (by the insurer) to be supporting "improvement" in the patient's condition, requiring resort to Medicare (if eligible) and/or Medicaid (if eligible).
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