VA MidSouth Healthcare Network

Palliative Care: We're with You Every Step of the Way

  When a patient has received the diagnosis of one or more chronic, often serious conditions, the impact can be devastating. Palliative care serves as a means to change all that.

   While hospice care is palliative care, palliative care is not the same as hospice care. Hospice focuses on patient care in a person’s remaining days, usually six months or less. But palliative care is specialized medical care that helps patients and their families live as fully as possible when facing life-threatening illnesses.

   Palliative care centers on the patient's needs, as well as the needs of caregivers. It aims to address the patient as a whole person, including his or her physical comfort, confidence, emotional wellbeing, spirituality, and dignity while dealing with a medical condition. Palliative care is simply a part of good, overall care focused on an improved quality Palliative Care: We’re with You Every Step of the Way! of life for the patient and the person's caregivers. A team of doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers, nutritionists and chaplains are involved.

   Through studies with VA and a major university hospital, palliative research has come a long way. Research has proved that palliative care, along with medical treatment, lowered depression and provided both a higher quality of life and a longer life for patients in three areas: it relieves physical and emotional suffering; it improves and strengthens the patient-physician communication and decision-making process; and it assures coordinated continuity of care across multiple health care settings such as a hospital, home, hospice, and long-term care.

   If you or a loved one is facing a serious illness, find out how VA programs such as these can help. For a complete list of the points of contact for Hospice and Palliative Care, visit http://www.visn9.va.gov/services/hpc.asp.

Hospice and Palliative Care Contacts

Table of Contents

• Patient Centered Care 
• My HealtheVet Means Easy Access to Your Health Team and Records 
• Palliative Care: We're with You Every Step of the Way 
• The Many Faces of Multiple Sclerosis 
• You Want to Move It! 
• E-Donate 

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