Palliative care improves the quality of life of older people with serious illnesses. Its mission is to provide relief of symptoms, pain, and stress for older people and their loved ones, addressing the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of elderly people. This holistic care entails that elderly people are dignified and live in the comfort of a loving background in their later life.
The palliative care team comes together to develop tailor-made care programs, manage pain and symptoms, improve life quality, and promote emotional wellness among older people and their families. The objective of hospice is to maintain their human dignity for their last days on earth, ensuring they are treated compassionately from the perspective that their entire being has to be acknowledged, which incorporates their physical, psychological, and spiritual needs at every stage of their life.
Palliative care and end-of-life care are two different but related types of healthcare interventions that have a common goal to improving the quality of life for patients with terminal diseases. Though the objectives may appear related, they differ in the focus and how long they should be implemented.
Palliative Care:
Palliative care is an approach to care that aims at ensuring better living conditions for patients with terminal illnesses whose lives may or may not be extended. It includes palliative care to alleviate pain and symptoms, offers emotional and psychological support, and deals with patients and their families spiritual and practical needs. Patients can receive palliative care and curative treatments as an illness progresses. The main objective is to provide maximum care to the patient and improve their overall well-being for the time being during the disease.
End-of-Life Care:
However, the case of end-of-life care refers to a particular kind of care offered to patients whose condition fails to respond to curative therapeutic interventions, with emphasis on enabling patients to die in peace, comfort, and dignity. It is intended to meet dying people’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs in their final weeks/days. End-of-life care ensures that the patient’s remaining time is free of pain and has maximum comfort in mind, as well as guiding the family members through the mourning period.
Palliative care is a broad concept that can be initiated before a disease and could be included with curative treatments. In contrast, end-of-life care is a subtype of palliative approach concerned with the terminal phase when curable procedures will not work. However, both these forms of care emphasise improving the patient’s quality of life and supporting their families in different phases of the death journey.
The 5 steps of palliative care for elderly people are a way of treating the varied needs of seniors with advanced illnesses. The stages are holistically meant to support the patients and their families, focusing on more than just physiological well-being.
Early Identification and Assessment:
During the first stage, focus on identifying the need for palliative care while carrying out complete assessment. This entails assessing their symptoms, determining their needs and wishes, and setting reasonable objectives of what should be expected in the illness process. Identifying a patient early enables early intervention and the creation of a customised care plan that considers the patient’s needs.
Symptom Management and Pain Relief:
In the second phase, the elderly patients are managed with various symptoms, including pain, nausea, fatigue and shortness of breath. The palliative care team uses individualised measures, including pain drugs and supplementary medication, to minimise pain and improve general well-being. The team seeks to alleviate distress among patients by addressing these symptoms so they can remain in a better state of wellness.
Emotional and Psychological Support:
Some of the emotional challenges associated with an older person’s illness include anxiety, depression and fear. The third phase is focused on offering emotional and mental therapy through counselling, therapy, and other interventions. The palliative care team collaborates with patients and families to provide them with directions along with support in understanding the emotional pain accompanying the illness.
Spiritual and Existential Care:
The fourth stage involves dealing with care’s spiritual and existential aspects, appreciating the importance of spiritual well-being in the elderly. Such actions may include discussion on life’s significance, religious/spiritual support and creating a space in which patients can articulate their convictions and feelings. Spiritual care aims to help elderly patients find peaceful closure, develop a purposeful and fulfilling sense of life, and connect with others.
End-of-Life Care and Bereavement Support:
The last phase of senior care focuses on providing elderly sufferers with peace and honour at their inevitable final exit. Palliative care entails the management of pain and offering emotional support with some counselling for the members of the bereaved family. The team assists families in dealing with the loss of their relatives and provides full support to them in this challenging period.
Therefore, the palliative care team intends to follow five stages to give holistic, emotional, and spiritual care that targets elderly patients’ well-being in the context of their illnesses.
Palliative care is, therefore, a compassionate way to help improve the lives of older people with terminal illnesses. The mission is comprehensive, covering patients’ and families’ physical, psychological and spiritual needs. It comprises different specialists working as a team to offer personalised services.
Palliative care and end-of-life are distinguished by timing and focus. Provides comfort and care to a patient during a disease and may include other supportive treatment. Palliative care provides end-of-life care, a specialised treatment for patients whose curative therapies do not function anymore and focuses on delivering peaceful, painless, and dignified passage through the last weeks or days of life.
Five stages guide palliative care for the elderly and these are informed by the fact that ageing presents changing needs, especially when it comes to terminally ill patients. They highlight early identification, symptom control, emotional and psychological support, spiritual care, and end-of-life comfort or bereavement support. In this context, they ensure that aged patients receive complete and whole care that respects their dignity and bodily, psychic and spiritual integrity until death.
Palliative care is usually given to a patient who has a terminal illness like cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, COPD, kidney failure, etc. It is not necessarily associated with one disease or condition but aims to improve terminal illness patients’ general well-being.
In palliative care, most diagnosis is cancer, while others are heart failure, COPD, dementia, end-stage renal disease, and neurodegenerative disease. Nevertheless, palliative care is for patients with different kinds of diseases that limit life. Its primary purpose is not to cure but to improve the quality of life.