Let’s first understand what palliative care exactly is. Simply put, cutting the long story short, palliative care refers to the medical care that is specialized for people diagnosed with some serious illness. It’s intended to improve the quality of life for both the patient as well as their family by granting the patient with comfort and support to combat the serious symptoms and stress related the illness. Not only this, palliative care comes out to be a partnership among the patient, the healthcare professional and the family and this not only helps in controlling the symptoms but also helps you to understand various options regarding the treatment options.
However, palliative care is quite misunderstood as far as the following popular myths are concerned:
Myth #1 ‘They’ say palliative care is only provided in hospitals.
No, palliative care is meant to give you comfort and relief from the painful symptoms of the serious illness, regardless the place. One can opt for palliative care wherever he/she lives. For instance, it can be provided at home or any hospice or hospital.
Myth #2 This type of care is for ‘terminal’ patients.
Shunning this myth, palliative care is for not only terminal patients or people dying from cancer, it can be for any kind of critical chronic illness and it can be provided from the point of diagnosis onward, disregarding the patient’s age or the likely course of the illness.
Myth #3 Opting for palliative care is considered as giving up on active treatment.
No, this type of care does not refer giving up on hope. Palliative care does not only support the patient and the family in the serious illness but also has effective curing abilities too. It comes as a reward and gratuity of rather longer life and more professional as well as comforting care.
Myth #4 People think of it to be only for physical pain
Okay, palliative care is meant to cure pain. However, this is not the only thing it’s meant to do. It also does relief the patient from depression, difficulty in sleeping and gives a positive perspective on life too. It’s beyond pain. Palliative care gives courage to gain strength to keep on moving on with life normally and joyfully.
Palliative care is certainly not a way to quicken up death. It’s rather a helpful hand of a healthcare professional to walk one more step ahead in life and then many more steps, being healthy and having the illness’ symptoms under control.
