What Is Palliative Care?
Why Is Palliative Care Important?
Talking to a Palliative Care Team
Myths About Palliative Care
What Is Advanced Care Planning?
More Resources and Guides
The goal of palliative care is to improve the quality of life of patients that have a serious or life-threatening disease. Palliative care is an approach centered around the whole person and supporting their family. The focus of care is to treat the physical and emotional symptoms and side effects of the cancer and its treatment.
What Is Palliative Care?
Palliative care is a critical piece of all health care that works to manage symptoms and ensures that patients, regardless of their illness, are getting optimal care. The goal is for the patient and their family to experience the highest quality of life possible. Palliative care also can help patients with communication with providers, coordination of their care and care planning. This diminishes the stress that patients experience and allows them to focus on the illness itself, receive the treatments in their totality that may extend their life.
Dr. Margaret Rosenzweig, PhD, CRNP-C, AOCNP, FAAN is an oncology nurse, nurse practitioner, and a Distinguished Service Professor of Nursing at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing.
Learn more about Dr. Rosenzweig »
Video Runtime: 5:03
Why Is Palliative Care Important?
Hear from survivors about how receiving palliative care helped improve their quality of life.
Amanda Helms, MS
Amanda Helms is a breast cancer survivor. She explains that she suffered unnecessarily through side effects of her medications for several years before she received a referral to a palliative care doctor. With the palliative care team, they discussed managing her pain and she was referred for acupuncture. It improved her overall quality of life and relieved her suffering.
Video Runtime: 3:04
Katie Jones
Katie is an anal cancer survivor. She shares her experience getting the referral to her palliative care team and the misconceptions she had about what they do to support patients. She discovered that they were experts in pain management, and they would help her get through treatment. The palliative care team referred her to supportive services like pelvic floor therapy and nutrition services to deal with side effects of her diagnosis.
Video Runtime: 3:56
Rebecca Muñoz, EdD, MPH, CHES
Rebecca is a breast cancer survivor. She experienced several infections and dealt with many unmanaged symptoms and side effects including pain for several years. At first, she had misconceptions about palliative care, but after transferring her care, she was introduced to palliative care to help with symptom management. They were able to help her with mental health support, spiritual support, pain management, and fatigue. They designed a care plan just for her that improved her overall quality of life.
Video Runtime: 8:35
Bethany Ross
What Can You Expect When Meeting With the Palliative Care Team?
Palliative care teams are made up of physicians and nurses that will meet with you to develop a plan to support your quality of life. Patients can prepare for these visits by identifying the most distressing symptoms and side effects that they would like to focus on. Patients should share what they believe is triggering their symptoms, past attempts to manage them, the level of relief of past interventions and the timeline of their symptoms. This allows the time to partner with patients to establish a new plan of action that is focused on setting achievable goals.
Video Runtime: 9:12
What Are the Misconceptions About Palliative Care?
There are many misconceptions about palliative care that lead patients and their families to not benefit from this medical service. The common myths about palliative care revolve around the purpose and goals of care, who may benefit, and when you should receive a referral. Learn how it can improve your quality of life.
Dr. C. Robert Bennett, PhD, CPNP-AC is a nurse scientist at the Mayo Clinic Arizona and works closely with the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology team. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship in palliative care and aging research at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Learn More about Dr. Bennett »
Video Runtime: 1:42
How Is Palliative Care Different From Hospice Care?
Palliative care services are appropriate for anyone who is living with a serious illness, regardless of the stage of illness. Two of the key indications for a palliative care consultation are receiving a serious illness diagnosis and having a need for support. Receiving palliative care does not preclude patients from simultaneously receiving treatment with a curative intent.
Hospice care is a service that the palliative care team may provide a patient, but it has a slightly different focus. Hospice care generally pertains to end-of-life care for patients who are anticipated to live six months or less. Hospice care can bring closure to a person’s life across the psychological, social, spiritual, and cultural aspects of care. Hospice helps coordinate end-of-life care through goals of care conversations.
Video Runtime: 5:21
What is Advanced Care Planning?
It is important to develop a plan of your final wishes for those who are taking care of you at the end of life. The conversations may be hard, but the purpose is to give the patient peace of mind while they are alive. It will also give their loved one’s peace of mind when they are making decisions on their loved one’s behalf. It may also be important to you to make a plan and create legacy items for family and friends, such as letters or video recordings.
Georgia Anderson, PhD, MSW has been a social worker for nearly 20 years. Her early career was spent working in the community mental health system before transitioning to medical social work. Most of her career has been spent working in oncology and palliative care at The Barrett Cancer Center at UC Health. She earned her PhD in social work in 2021 and currently is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati.
Learn More about Dr. Anderson »
Video Runtime: 10:43
Palliative Care Resources
from The Conversation Project
Your Conversation Starter Guide
How to talk about what matters to you and have a say in your health care.
Talking with a Health Care Team Guide
How to talk about the care that is right for you or someone you care for.
What Matters to Me Workbook
A workbook to help people with serious illness figure out what is most important to them.
The Conversation Project
The Conversation Project® is a public engagement initiative of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). Our goal is both simple and transformative: to help everyone talk about their wishes for care through the end of life, so those wishes can be understood and respected.
It’s time to share the way we want to live through the end of our lives. And it’s time to communicate about the kind of care we want and don’t want for ourselves.
We believe that the place for this to begin is at the kitchen table—not in the intensive care unit—with the people who matter most to us, before it’s too late.
Together we can make these difficult conversations easier. We can make sure that our own wishes, and those of the people who matter most to us (our loved ones, friends, chosen family), are both understood and respected. The Conversation Project offers free tools, guidance, and resources to begin talking with those who matter most about your and their wishes.
More Palliative Care Learning
Survivorship Care is Palliative Care – Patricia A. Ganz, MD
In this lecture, NCCS founding member and Stovall Award winner Dr. Patricia Ganz presents the many reasons why palliative care is integral to survivorship care. From the beginning of her career, Dr. Ganz recognized the importance of delivering palliative care to cancer patients from the time of diagnosis rather than waiting until the last few weeks of life to enhance their quality of life. She stressed that services such as care planning, palliative care, psychosocial support, prevention, and management of long-term and late effects, and family caregiver support should be delivered to patients and their families throughout the entire continuum of care.
Presentation Deck: Survivorship Care is Palliative Care (PDF)
Dr. Ganz, a medical oncologist, has been a member of the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine since 1978 and the UCLA School of Public Health since 1992. She was a founding member of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) in 1986, and has dedicated much of her research career to studying both the acute and late effects of cancer treatment in patients and survivors.
Video Runtime: 37:12
Supportive Cancer Care – Thomas J. Smith, MD
In this lecture, Thomas J. Smith, MD of Johns Hopkins University shares lessons learned from his 35-year career in palliative care and supportive oncology, as well as from his own experience living with metastatic cancer.
Dr. Smith shared a useful mnemonic for having tough conversations — AMEN:
- A – Affirm
- M – Meet them where they are
- E – Education
- N – No matter what
Dr. Smith is an oncologist and palliative care specialist with a lifelong interest in better symptom management and improving access to high quality affordable care. As an oncologist he specialized in comprehensive multi-disciplinary breast cancer for 25 years.
Video Runtime: 51:10
This initiative is supported by an educational grant from Daiichi Sankyo.
National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship
8455 Colesville Road | Suite 930 | Silver Spring, MD 20910
info@canceradvocacy.org | (877) NCCS-YES
Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions
Copyright © 1995-2024 by the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship
National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, NCCS, Cancer Survival Toolbox, and related Logos are registered in the United States as trademarks of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship.
