Palliative Care Blog

‘That’s So Last Century’: Bias, Misconceptions Impede Access to Palliative Care

By Martie Lynch, PA

The elevator doors opened and a white-haired physician entered without making eye contact. His hospital badge indicated Internal Medicine. I said “good morning” and he looked at me and scrutinized my badge quietly, without returning any greeting. Then he said, “Are you new here? I haven’t seen you around before.”

That seemed to be my moment to feel proud of the new role I had undertaken so I told him I had recently been hired onto the Palliative Medicine consulting service as a PA. His quiet, reserved expression changed very subtly. I saw it and felt a familiar discomfort rising in me.

As he got off the elevator, without looking at me, he said, “How depressing for you.

[Read more…]

Palliative Care and Painful Anniversaries

By Jennifer Moore Ballentine

Pretty much I hate February, even in this most blessed and gorgeous climate. This past weekend was a double-whammy anniversary. On February 2, 2006, my mother died. She had enrolled in hospice the previous September, following a tough couple of years with COPD, and was the fourth of my teenage kid’s grandparents to die in a little more than 2 years. That fall, I’d completed my master’s degree in End-of-Life Studies (trying, unsuccessfully to receive extra credit for the lived experience of the previous couple of years!) and had started a job with the Colorado Center for Hospice and Palliative Care.

In October, my mother had tartly remarked, “You’re the only person I know who has to get a master’s degree to learn how to hold someone’s hand.” Ouch. But her last public outing, which was a mighty struggle in the December cold, was to see me “walk,” and she clapped the loudest and longest of all as I got my diploma and shook the university president’s hand. We had that kind of relationship.

[Read more…]

Passion, Purpose, and Preparation: The Power of Palliative Social Work

By Shirley Otis-Green, MSW, MA, ACSW, LCSW, OSW-C

How are you spending your days? Wisely and well? Working in palliative and oncology care, I am acutely conscious of how quickly time passes and how uncertain is our future. My wish for you is that your days are filled with passion. Passion for your family and friends and personal interests, but passion for your work as well.

Passion is our strongest motivator and most reliable indicator that our actions are authentically our own. Passion fuels our efforts to be a force for change. And a transformation in how care is currently delivered is desperately needed. Our fragmented health “system” is poorly designed for the care that our patients and their care partners so urgently need.

[Read more…]

Palliative Care: The Next Frontier for APRNs?

Advanced Practice Nurses Find Deep Satisfaction in Improving Care for People with Serious Illness

Palliative care is delivered to patients and their families when they are at their most vulnerable, a perfect fit for advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) who love the challenge of working with complex situations and building close relationships with their patients and families.

Palliative care focuses on providing relief from physical symptoms and stress of a serious illnesses, addressing the whole person. Although sometimes confused with hospice, it’s important to remember hospice is a specific type of palliative care designed to address the needs of those who have 6 months or less to live. In other words, hospice care is always palliative, but not all palliative care is hospice care. Palliative care can be offered at any point in a serious illness, from diagnosis onward—alongside curative treatment or without it.

[Read more…]