If you’ve been diagnosed with a serious illness—cancer, organ failure, a neurological disease—it might be worrying to hear your doctor recommend palliative care. But palliative care does not mean the end of treatment or that you’re at the end of your life.
“Palliative care is an additional tool that can be used during treatment of disease,” says Jared Lowe, MD, a UNC Health hospice and palliative medicine physician. “It can be integrated at any step of serious illness, not just at the tail end of life.”
In fact, clinical trials have shown that palliative care during cancer treatment can result in less depression, improved quality of life and longer survival.
“It’s a better treatment for the person as a whole, so they can get more therapy and focus on better disease control,” Dr. Lowe says.
There are other benefits, too. Dr. Lowe explains.
Palliative Care Benefit: Better Symptom Control
Diseases cause symptoms such as pain, shortness of breath and fatigue, and the treatments for those diseases can cause side effects including nausea, brain fog, and urinary and bowel issues, to name but a few.
Sometimes, a treatment may be working well but the side effects are tough on you—that’s where palliative care can help.
A palliative care provider can identify the best medications for issues such as pain or nausea that won’t interfere with your treatment or provide education and resources on modifications you can make to your diet to support your changed appetite. They can connect you to complementary therapies that may help, such as massage or physical therapy.
They’ll also coordinate their recommendations with the doctor in charge of your treatment, such as your oncologist or cardiologist.
“It gives you another layer of dedicated help,” Dr. Lowe says. “Your primary doctor can focus on your treatment, and palliative care can focus on your symptoms and give you another person to call.”
Palliative Care Benefit: Emotional Support
A palliative care team is made up of doctors, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, chaplains and other therapists who know that dealing with disease is tough, even when you have a good prognosis.
“One of the big benefits of palliative care is help with coping skills,” Dr. Lowe says. “We reinforce the coping skills a person has and provide strategies for building them and integrating new ones in a difficult time.”
Everyone will have different emotional needs after receiving difficult health news, so whether you’re looking for a therapist to talk through concerns, a support group so you can connect with others or spiritual guidance about issues related to mortality, palliative care can help.
Palliative Care Benefit: An Opportunity to Plan and Identify Goals
Your doctor may be extremely confident in your treatment plan, but a serious illness is still an opportunity to make sure your plans for the end of your life are documented.
“Even if you feel relatively well, we can help with advance care planning,” Dr. Lowe says. “We can talk through what’s important to you and help think through who will make decisions and communicate for you if you can’t communicate. Having that conversation early is helpful to you and your healthcare team.”
In addition to making sure you have the documents you need, palliative care providers can help you think about your future health. There may be a point where a certain treatment option is not worth it to you because of the time in the hospital it would involve or the side effects it could cause, and palliative care providers can help you think through those issues.
“Palliative care is like planning for a rainy day,” Dr. Lowe says. “Doctors are going to do their best to treat the disease and while we expect the best outcome possible, we can help you talk through other outcomes. If your timeline does become shorter—what would be most important to you? That might be the ability to see your granddaughter graduate from high school or the ability to stay in your home for as long as possible.”
While those kinds of conversations can be difficult, the vast majority of patients benefit from having them, Dr. Lowe says, and palliative care providers can help you communicate your desires to your healthcare team.
Palliative Care Benefit: Support for Your Family
Palliative care provides another layer of support for your family.
“The social workers on our team are all trained counselors,” Dr. Lowe says. “A lot of people want to know how to talk to their kids about their disease, and they can help with talking to family members and anticipating what to expect.”
Palliative care providers can provide your family with resources that can help them, whether that’s a support group or more information about caregiving.
The help you receive in planning and setting goals also helps your family.
“Advance care planning really benefits families if there’s a crisis,” Dr. Lowe says. “When they’ve been a part of those conversations, it’s easier to make a decision. If they know what their parent wanted, they don’t have to guess or second-guess a decision, and that provides peace of mind.”
Palliative Care Benefit: Identifying Resources and Navigating Systems
Life is busy, and dealing with a serious illness makes your to-do list a lot longer. Palliative care providers can help identify resources that will ease your burden and help you make sense of your next steps.
For example, if you’re working, palliative care can help you understand whether you’ll need to apply for long-term disability and provide information on available resources. If you’re struggling to understand your doctor’s instructions, palliative care providers can work with you and your team to ensure good communication.
If, at some point, there are no more options for treatment, palliative care providers can help you transition into hospice, which is care for the end of life. Hospice can include many aspects of palliative care, but the person is no longer seeking curative treatment.
“We can normalize how challenging this is and help navigate the system for people,” Dr. Lowe says.
If you’re interested in palliative care support, talk to your doctor. If you need a doctor, find one near you.