Palliative care and death
Palliative care is a benign and continual form of treatment, conducted in a way that is sensitive to the dignity of patients and the significance of the people closes to them. The aim is to make death as free of symptoms and free of apprehension as possible, and to ensure that relatives and friends are in a position to cope with the patient’s death.
The decision to change to palliative care is made by the doctor performing medical treatment. Often, this decision precedes symptomatic treatment, which is used when curative treatment no longer yields results. Palliative care requires a doctor’s referral.
The start of palliative care is often linked to an assessment of how long the patient is expected to live, which is based on the nature of the disease and to changes in the patient’s functional capacity, general condition and symptoms. It is often impossible to make a precise prognosis. Developments in treatment have altered the duration of palliative care, with the effect that a patient’s general condition may remain good for a fairly long time, but may suddenly decline, quickly followed by death.
The guiding rule in palliative care is that it ensured that the patient is comfortable and untroubled by disease symptoms. Palliative care always involves symptomatic treatment, the support given to relatives and friends, pleasant surroundings and dignified and humane treatment. A long term illness may cause various symptoms for which different methods of treatment are used. There are many effective methods for relieving pain able to stop almost all sorts of pain.
The patients’ feelings of distress become less when they feel that they are listened to and that their wishes are respected. In particular, it is often a relief for patients to know about the many possible forms of pain relief.
Updated 10.7.2009
