Palliative Care

Dunlap Tennessee has no emergency room. We have many disabled and sick people here. Most of the people are good, and when a family member becomes chronically ill or disabled the family sticks together and provides care, rides to the doctor and even hires caregivers to come into the home. There are alternatives. One in particular (palliative care ) isn’t widely known  and doctors seem to be not providing information about the services. Palliative care isn’t giving up, it’s getting help. Dunlap Tennessee or Nashville Tennessee you might get some desperately relief and assistance from these available services.

I looked it up on the net and found the definition to be unclear and poorly defined. Each agency providing these services has different criteria for being accepted into the programs but if one  agency rejects you or a loved one please try another. When I find myself in a position where I don’t know something, I ask someone who does. Often hospice agencies provide palliative care.  This causes some problems in peoples perception of the care provided. Some home health agencies and physicians clinics offer palliative care actually they offer it more than hospice.  I personally know many people here that can benefit from this care.  It lessens the burden on the family and provides relief to the patient. I asked someone that knows and has worked in the field, this article exceeds my knowledge. I wanted it correct and easy to understand.  Suffering can be eased in both the patient and their family, often in Dunlap it seems to be the family. Ask your doctor for a referral. Sometimes they are unaware of your circumstances.

I asked a medical professional to define palliative care. This was their reply:

In looking at palliative care verses regular care verses hospice care, each of these are entirely different entities when it comes to how they are approached in the medical field. Many people, as well as medical personnel lack knowledge of the advantages palliative care as well as hospice care can offer to the patient who has reached an end to seeking aggressive medical care because it is determined it will not cure their disease.

Regular Care: when a person has a medical ailment or disease that they go to the doctor to seek treatment for. They have what tests are needed to assist in helping them to recover and live a long healthy as normal life. Their expectancy for life is unknown and therefore their disease or ailment is vigorously treated with surgeries, tests, medications, doctor visits, physical therapy, and whatever is needed to assist.

Hospice Care: when a doctor determines that if a person’s disease runs its normal course the person is likely to have less than six months to live. Treatment such as tests become unnecessary and medications, surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation or other aggressive treatments will not assist in this person’s recovery but will only prolong their suffering or lessen their lives if aggressive treatment is continued. In other words there is no cure. However, there are comfort measures and medications that hospice services can provide to assist that individual in having the best most quality care possible which in many cases the person is less sick and lives a better longer quality of life than before hospice.

Palliative Care: when a doctor has determined there is no cure for this person’s ailment or disease, yet that person may still have some treatments or medications that can provide comfort while not saying this person has six months or less to live if the disease runs its normal course. While on palliative care the person can receive comfort care like hospice gives, yet they are not deemed terminal. They are just not seeking a cure anymore they are seeking to be kept comfortable. Some of these people may be receiving chemotherapy and or radiation while being on palliative care. This just means they are still in a place where the doctor has decided these measures may shrink the disease process or stunt its growth and/or assist in providing the patient with comfort.
~ J. Williams R.N. Hospice