Is palliative care part of hospice care?
Correspondingly, is palliative care end of life care?
End of life care includes palliative care. If you have an illness that cannot be cured, palliative care makes you as comfortable as possible, by managing your pain and other distressing symptoms. It also involves psychological, social and spiritual support for you and your family or carers.
Keeping this in view, can patients receive palliative care while receiving hospice care?
Hospice and palliative care both offer compassionate care to patients with life limiting illnesses. But palliative care – which is always a component of hospice care – can be used as a separate area of medical practice while the patient is receiving treatment.
Comfort care also improves quality of life by meeting the mental, social and spiritual needs of patients and their families. Palliative care is for people at any stage in their illness. The illness does not have to be life-threatening. Palliative care patients can still seek treatments to cure their illness.