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Palliative care is the model of interdisciplinary, team-based care that offers symptom management as well as person-centered support to navigate each step on the journey of a serious illness, from the beginning to the very end. There is a big misunderstanding among the community as a whole, clinicians and patients alike, about when is the best time to offer access to palliative care services. Palliative care can, and should, be offered to anyone who is facing a serious illness at any time during the course of their journey.
For example, let’s think about someone who was just diagnosed with leukemia. From the time of diagnosis until serious functional, nutritional, emotional and mental distress become evident, there are plenty of opportunities to offer a higher level of support, the kind of support that maintains people on a path of healing and is aligned with their goals and values. And it’s also relevant to their unique needs. In other words, the sooner patients access palliative care, the more tools they have in their toolbox to navigate the difficult path ahead.
Research done in a prestigious cancer center in California, city of hope, showed that patients with lung cancer who had early access to palliative care reported better quality of life and had a longer survival compared to those who did not have access at all, or to whom palliative care was offered at the end stage of the illness.
