Palliative Care

What is Palliative Care?

Palliative care is focused on comforting and providing relief from the symptoms and stresses of a serious illness. It is done together with treatments that are meant to cure a person’s disease, and is based on the patient’s needs, not on their prognosis. Palliative care can be done at any age and at any phase of a serious illness but it is best to begin care as soon as possible after a diagnosis.

Palliative care is not hospice care. It helps patients carry on with their daily lives, improve their ability to go through medical treatments and better understand their condition and medical care choices.

Improving Quality of Life During a Serious Illness

To improve a patient’s quality of life, our palliative care team:

• Helps relieve suffering and distress from such symptoms as pain, depression, anxiety, fatigue, shortness of breath, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite, nausea and difficulty sleeping
• Helps patients better understand their disease and diagnosis
• Clarifies a patient’s treatment goals and options
• Understands and supports the patient’s ability to cope
• Provides support for patients and families making complex medical decisions
• Coordinates with other care providers

Our specially trained team of palliative care physicians and nurses works closely with the patient’s other doctors, as well as social workers, chaplains, nutrition support services, physical therapists, psychologists and other specialists. This collaboration provides comprehensive support for seriously ill patients and their families.

Holistic Approach to Care

Palliative care offers a holistic approach to managing illness and includes physical, psycho-social, spiritual and advanced care planning services.

Our team focuses on the person, while other care providers focus on the disease.

Support for Families

Numerous studies show that palliative care significantly improves a patient’s quality of life and eases symptoms of the serious illness. Better quality of life for the patient also lessens the stress for families who are dealing with the illness of a loved one.

Our palliative care team meets with patients and families to provide extra support and care.

Our Locations

Our palliative care team provides inpatient care for adult patients with serious illnesses at the Center for Care and Discovery in Hyde Park and UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey. Outpatient palliative care is provided for oncology and cardiology patients at the Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine in Hyde Park.