Patient Care
Hospices provide 'Palliative Care' to patients with progressive illness.
Palliative care is the active, total care of patients whose disease is not responsive to curative treatment. Care focuses on maximising patient quality, rather than quantity of life.
Palliative care:
Palliative care is the active, total care of patients whose disease is not responsive to curative treatment. Care focuses on maximising patient quality, rather than quantity of life.
Palliative care:
- Affirms life and regards dying as a normal process
- Neither hastens nor postpones death
- Provides relief from pain and other symptoms
- Provides holistic care, integrating psychological, physical and spiritual aspects of care.
- Supports patients as they live as actively as possible until death.
- Offers a support system to help the family cope during the patients illness and bereavement.
- World Health Organisation (WHO) Definition of Palliative Care 1990