Palliative care is specialized medical care for people with serious illnesses. The type of care is focused on providing patients with relief from the symptoms, pain and stress of a serious illness – no matter the diagnosis.

The goal of palliative care is to improve quality of life for both the patient and their family. Palliative care is provided by a team of doctors, nurses and other specialists who work with a patient’s medical team to provide extra support for the patient and their family. Palliative care is appropriate for any age, as well as during any stage in a serious illness, and it can be provided together with curative treatment.

More information at https://ukhealthcare.uky.edu/services....

Transcript:
My name is Debra Gleason. I'm the Transitional Care Leader for Palliative Care here at UK HealthCare.

So palliative care is a medical specialty that provides an extra layer of support to patients and families who are dealing with serious illness. It can happen anytime during the process of that illness, so very early, at time of diagnosis, or as we get closer to end of life. It can also be given with curative treatment.

So we help people that may be going through chemotherapy or radiation, some of those aggressive treatments. We're able to help them with symptom management and also talk about advanced care planning and kind of what their steps are along with their treatment.

So our care team is multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary, however you want to look at it. We have providers. So we have physicians, and we have nurse practitioners. We have nurses, myself, and we also have two case managers who kind of triage and then also provide hospice liaison support. We have a full-time licensed clinical social worker, who provides some counseling and support to our patients and families. And then we also have a chaplain, who provides spiritual support to our palliative care patients.

So here in our inpatient center, it is a physician order to, a referral to a palliative care consult. So that would be a resident or an intending putting in an order. We get the order, and then we go ahead and see the patients.

Sometimes, because we're so visible on the floors, our physicians, our social worker really connect with the treatment teams on the floors. And so it may be, "Hey, I have this patient," and the discussion happens around the patient and kind of what's going on with them. And then we can get the order after that.

We see patients from the age of 18 and on. And so we see those that have had chronic illnesses, that are going through various stages of those illnesses. We also see newly-diagnosed individuals, individuals who have been healthy their entire life and then, all of a sudden, are impacted with a serious illness and what that means to them and their level of functioning.

We see a lot of people from eastern Kentucky who don't have good access to health care. And so we're introducing concepts that they may not be knowledgeable about and really giving them options and providing them the information to make the decisions about what their medical care looks like.

I think we're really good at listening. I think that that's probably one thing that-- and by listening, I mean hearing what the patients are saying, not necessarily the specific words, but hearing what the patients and families are saying when they're telling us their story or what they want.

We have the luxury of being able to go into a patient room and sitting down and listening to the patient and the family. So we have that time to really spend and, like I said, listen to what they're actually saying.