Palliative Medical Associates

Specialties

Curative care is meant to cure a disease. Palliative care is meant to make the patient more comfortable.

When a cancer patient gets therapeutic massage or counseling, those are considered palliative care: they make the patient feel better. Radiation, chemotherapy or surgery falls under the heading of curative care: it is meant to remove the cause of the cancer. Many people receiving curative care also receive (or should receive) the benefits of palliative care to address the discomfort, symptoms and stress of both the illness and the side effects of treatments.

Palliative Medical Associates is staffed by clinicians board certified in hospice and palliative medicine. Palliative Medical Associates enhances the care our hospice teams provide in specific VITAS locations.

Hospice care is palliative care. Both focus on comfort and support rather than cure. Palliative care is available to anyone coping with serious illness. It can begin at diagnosis and continue alongside curative care. Hospice is limited to patients with a life expectancy of six months or less. It begins when the patient and the patient’s physician agree that curative treatment is no longer effective and/​or that the side effects outweigh the benefits.

History

Established in 1978.

Palliative care treatment grew out of the hospice movement. To palliate is «to make a disease or its symptoms less severe or unpleasant without removing the cause.» Palliative care can ease the symptoms of such illnesses as cancer, congestive heart failure, COPD, kidney failure, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, etc.

Today most large hospitals (300 or more beds) offer a palliative specialist or palliative team who works with the patient’s other physicians to address the physical, psychological, social or spiritual distress of serious illness and its treatment.