Understanding and Accessing Palliative Care Services for Patients with Progressive Illness

Abstract

As our country’s population ages, there are more patients with advanced chronic illness and increasingly complex care needs. Our rapidly changing healthcare environment now recognizes the importance of improving care quality to achieve better health outcomes while lowering cost and improving patient satisfaction. This focus solidified the emergence of Palliative Care as an essential specialty to provide the comprehensive care that these patients with advanced chronic illness require. Palliative Care assists patients and families with difficult decision-making, addresses pain and other distressing symptoms, helps prolong life, controls costs, and most importantly, improves patient and family satisfaction. To maximize the benefits of palliative care, practicing Family Physicians need to develop primary palliative care knowledge and skills while recognizing when specialty level palliative care is required. Prognostication is an essential skill as it allows patients and families to establish realistic goals of care that will guide medical decision making throughout the disease trajectory. In all settings, primary and specialty level palliative care is best delivered by an interdisciplinary team with the Family Physician as an essential team member.