by Andrea Beeney

Created on: April 20, 2010

Palliative care is concerned with caring for those who have been diagnosed as being terminally ill – primarily non curable conditions. The focus is on a holistic approach to dying and aims to provide relief from symptoms and establish communication and support for both the dying person and their families and carers. The World Health Organisation defines palliative care as;

            ‘Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life – threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.’

            (WHO, 2008)

            Specialist palliative care involves specific training on how to incorporate all aspects of this approach into the care of the dying, predominantly that of cancer.

            The first hospice was formed in 1842 in France and then in Ireland in 1849, although quite separately. The idea proved very popular and the number of hospices grew over the 1980’s and 1990’s and started to become less exclusively for cancer patients. In the early 1990’s there was a development in hospices especially dedicated to patients with HIV although all bar one of these have now closed as HIV is deemed as primarily curable. Now hospices are specially commissioned and are not developing in numbers as there has been a shift in medical emphasis towards cure over relief.        

            The term terminal is usually assigned to those patients who are un-curable and specifically those who are predictably dying. It tends not to be associated with unpredictable situations such as trauma where although the prognosis is fatal there is no predictable point of death and so the term terminal is not usually applied. Hospice is the term for care of the dying primarily within an in hospital unit. There is occasionally the provision for respite care and in recent years there has been an increase in separate buildings for hospice units but the word hospice means in hospital. Palliative care

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