There are so many different types of care available for people at various stages of managing their health issues. One type of care, palliative care, is often misunderstood because many people don’t know what palliative treatments are or what they can do. Getting as much information as possible about palliative therapies can help you and your family member to decide what treatments are the right ones for her needs.
What Is Palliative Care Exactly?
Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what exactly palliative care is. It’s often lumped in with hospice care, but it’s a different type of care altogether. Also, unlike hospice therapies, your family member doesn’t need to be near the end of life to take advantage of these therapies. Palliative treatments involve improving quality of life as much as possible and improving symptom management for people who have chronic health issues, such as respiratory diseases, heart disease, and other chronic conditions.
This Is Care in Addition to Other Types of Care
Palliative treatments don’t take the place of your family member’s primary care physician and any treatments already in place to manage her health. These treatments are an addition that works in conjunction with primary care therapies. Ideally, palliative therapies offer improvements to your family member’s daily life.
Palliative Therapies Occur as Often as Needed
Palliative therapies focus on your family member and her life and her needs. That means that if massages help with pain relief, she might be able to include them as part of her care plan on a regular basis. These therapies and treatments are about alleviating and managing symptoms in a way that helps your family member as much as possible.
Palliative Caregivers Come to Your Family Member
Palliative care isn’t something that your family member has to go to, either, although some services might require that she does go somewhere to meet with a practitioner. These are typically treatments and caregivers that can come to your family member if necessary. That helps her to have the flexibility that she needs in order to manage her health most effectively.
Managing chronic health issues is never an easy task. For your family member, that might mean asking about palliative treatments and how to include those as a part of her overall care plan. Adding palliative treatments should make life easier for her and help her to feel more in control of her own health, even as it continues to change over time.