Palliative care in Melbourne has come to the forefront in recent years, especially with the work of Melbourne Palliative Care, which specialises in effectively relieving pain and other distressing symptoms experienced by patients with life-limiting illnesses.
Many patients and their families are now requesting palliative care services as opposed to traditional medical treatment from their doctors, but why is this? How does palliative care work, and how can it be used to improve your end-of-life experience? This article will explore these questions and more.
What is palliative care?
Palliative care is the ongoing physical, psychological, and social support of a person who has an illness or medical condition that cannot be cured.
It can relieve someone’s symptoms and their family members’ concerns and stresses, so they can focus on living every day as fully as possible.
Melbourne Palliative Care includes hospice services and other types of supportive counseling. Palliative care helps people with serious illnesses to achieve their optimum level of functioning by enabling them to continue to do what is important to them.
How does it differ from end-of-life treatments?
Palliative care is the kind of supportive care people often need when their condition becomes serious. It’s different from end-of-life treatments because it focuses on the quality of life and comfort of the patient, rather than improving the chances of survival.
However, there are some diseases that may not benefit from this treatment. For example, a person with advanced cancer may be given chemo treatments to lengthen their life and help manage pain, while someone with heart disease might have surgery to repair an artery blockage.
It can be hard to decide what type of treatment is best for someone in their final months or years of life. When deciding which treatments they want, it’s important to know that it’s natural to feel anxious about death, especially how we die.
The benefits of palliative care for both the patient and their loved ones
Melbourne Palliative Care is a dedicated service providing free access to psychological and spiritual support, medical assessment, and medical management to people in the last months of their life. You’ll have access to all services from one location.
It can also help connect with other community resources like aged care and disability support, funerals, or housing.
Their expert team who strives to provide 24-hour on call nursing for patients who need help at night or during the day.
What to expect during the palliative care process?
Palliative care works by reducing or relieving suffering for those in the last stages of a life-limiting illness and addresses the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs of the patient. It is typically provided on an inpatient or outpatient basis.
Palliative care is given to individuals with serious illnesses, such as cancer, AIDS, heart disease, or dementia; it can also be offered to people with non-serious chronic conditions such as diabetes or kidney failure.
Many patients do not know they have a terminal illness until their doctor tells them so. The doctor will then tell them about all the treatment options that may prolong their lives. At this point, some people decide to pursue treatments while others opt for palliative care instead.
