Palliative Care

What is Palliative Care?
You may have heard of a new medical term – palliative care (pronounced PAH-LEE-UH-TIVE). For the last thirty years, hospice programs have provided palliative care for dying Americans. Currently these programs serve more than 1 million patients and their families each year.

Now this very same approach to care is being used by Hospice of Holland to help more people who are seriously ill, but perhaps not terminally ill.

To palliate means to make comfortable by treating a person’s symptoms related to a serious illness. Hospice and palliative care both focus on helping a person be comfortable by addressing issues causing physical or emotional pain.

Hospice focuses on relieving symptoms and supporting patients and their families.  Hospice patients generally have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.

Palliative care may be given at any time during a patient’s serious illness often much earlier than Hospice care.  The goals of palliative care are to improve the quality of a seriously ill person’s life and to support that person and their family during and after treatment.

Hospice of Holland’s Palliative Care Program
The Palliative care program at Hospice of Holland is designed to improve the quality of life for those who suffer from serious and life-threatening illnesses.

The core services include three components:
- Complex symptom management
- Communication with families and patients to establish the goals of care
- Help people learn to live with their illness

What do we offer our Palliative Care patients?
We offer a physician consultation, provided by Hospice of Holland’s Medical Director, Dr. Roger Phillips, upon request from the patient’s physician.

The consultation entails:
- Dr. Roger Phillips meeting with patients and their families wherever they reside
- Assessment of the management of symptoms associated with the serious illness and the discomfort of invasive treatments
- Discussion of the goals of care with patients and families
- Help with understanding the course of the disease
- Assisting patients and their families to establish realistic expectations about the future
- Assessment of the potential value of introducing counseling and pastoral resources to help patients and families cope with the transitions they are facing

To refer a patient to palliative care or hospice care, please call:
Admissions Department
Mary Jo Busscher or Lori VanDoornik at 616.396.2972