When should palliative care be offered?
If you are living with a life-limiting condition, you may feel your only option for receiving the care you need is to move away from home. With the help of a professional and dedicated live-in carer, you can receive the quality, palliative care you need in the place you love most – your own home.
Palliative care at home can begin at any stage of your treatment. Some people begin palliative care when they are first diagnosed, while others wait until a later stage of their medical condition. In this guide, we will explore what palliative care is and provide information about when palliative care can be offered.
If you are considering palliative care for yourself or a loved one, do not hesitate to contact us. We have extensive experience in providing compassionate and high-quality palliative care. Our friendly and approachable team is here to help you make sense of your options.
What is palliative care?
Palliative, or end-of-life care, is a form of care designed to enhance the quality of life for anyone living with a life-limiting or chronic condition and their families. Palliative care is focused on helping you treat the physical and emotional symptoms of your condition while allowing you to continue to lead the life you choose.
Palliative care is based on the needs and wants of the person and not on their prognosis. It can be provided at any age and at any stage of your illness. Palliative care is often provided alongside curative treatments.
What is included in palliative care?
Palliative care can involve a number of duties and tasks, all centred around making you feel as comfortable as possible throughout your illness. These tasks may include, but are not limited to:
- Providing discreet and sensitive personal care
- Help with household tasks
- Planning and cooking meals
- Ensuring proper mobility and safety around the home
- Caring for your pets
- Providing companionship and emotional support as you need it
- Specialist nurse-led care
When should someone be offered palliative care?
Palliative care can be offered at any time throughout the course of someone’s life-limiting or chronic illness. You do not need to wait until the advanced stages of your condition or when you are in the final stages of your life. In fact, the earlier you begin palliative the sooner you can start to receive care that enhances your quality of life and makes living with your illness or condition more manageable.
There are a number of factors that should be taken into consideration when making the choice to begin palliative or end-of-life care. If managing your illness or chronic condition has become difficult, it may be time to seek professional help. Before making any decision about your care, it’s important to first speak with your healthcare team to determine the type of care you need to continue to live the life you want.
Common misconceptions about palliative care
There are many misconceptions surrounding palliative care, including:
Palliative care is only provided in a hospital.
If you are in need of palliative care you do not necessarily need to move into a hospice following discharge from a hospital. In many cases, palliative care can be provided right in the comfort of your own home.
You can only receive palliative care if you are near the end of your life.
You can receive palliative care at any point during your diagnosis or treatment. While it’s true that palliative care serves those with life-limiting illnesses, many palliative care recipients go on to receive palliative care for many years while others are cured and no longer require it.
Palliative care is only for pain.
Pain as a symptom of a life-limiting or chronic illness is one reason to seek palliative care. However, palliative care can provide additional support in a number of ways such as help with daily tasks, medication management, companionship, or spiritual and emotional support.
Treatment stops when palliative care begins.
Palliative care may begin at any time during your treatment, including right after your initial diagnosis. In many cases, palliative care coexists alongside other therapies and treatments.
Palliative care can not help family and friends.
Although palliative care is always centred around the needs and preferences of the individual with care needs, it can provide much-needed emotional support and peace of mind to family members and friends too.
Palliative care from The Good Care Group
At the Good Care Group, we’ve been supporting people with life-limiting or chronic illnesses for over 10 years. We understand that palliative or end-of-life care requires a professional, compassionate and respectful approach. Through our quality live-in care services, we can help you effectively manage the symptoms of your condition, while providing companionship and emotional support as and when you need it.
Our nurse-led, live-in palliative care allows our clients to remain in their much loved home while receiving the quality care they need. Our professional carers are trained to monitor and measure health outcomes, so that we can shape and continually improve the care we provide. All of our palliative carers must successfully complete our palliative care training programme endorsed by Dr Kathyrn Mannix, an industry-leading palliative care consultant.
On top of providing you with quality care designed to improve health outcomes, our dedicated palliative carers can help enhance your life in a number of ways. From helping you with personal tasks such as bathing or dressing to helping you manage your medications, our professional carers are always there to lend a helping hand while allowing you to maintain as much independence as possible.
Our palliative care services are highly flexible and can be provided as either 24-hour live-in care, short-term care or respite care. While each form of care can be tailored to your own unique needs, live-in care offers many additional benefits. A live-in carer will move into your home to provide you with dedicated, round-the-clock care. This allows for a continuity of care that is difficult to achieve with short-term care arrangements. With live-in care, your carer will not only learn your needs and preferences, but they’ll also have the time to get to know you as a person and build a meaningful relationship
If you or one of your loved ones could benefit from palliative care, contact our friendly team to learn how we can support you and your family.
Talk to us about your care needs
To talk about your care needs, contact one of our friendly advisors. Calls from landlines are free.