Our palliative care program aims to achieve the best possible quality of life for patients to help relieve suffering, control pain, manage symptoms and restore functional capacity. The program aims to effectively achieve these objectives while remaining sensitive to personal, cultural and religious values and beliefs. The department attends to approximately 10 new admissions and 50 consultation or outpatient visits per month. We provide an unparalleled model of multi-disciplinary collaboration, working closely with medical oncology, hematology and radiotherapy departments across the National Center for Cancer Care and Research.
As a department we specialize in pain and symptom management, quality of life and other aspects of palliative care (psychological, emotional, social, spiritual, existential and cultural).
In terms of the scope of therapeutic services our department provides, this includes:
- Optimizing symptom control
- Optimizing functional status when appropriate
- Promoting the highest quality of life for patients and their families
- Establishing an environment that is comforting and healing
- Educating patients and families to promote understanding of the underlying disease process and expected future course of their illness
- Planning for discharge to the appropriate level of care in a timely manner
- Collaborating with the primary/referring team in developing a plan of care
- Providing physical, psychological, social and spiritual support to patients and their families
- Assisting actively dying patients and their families in preparing for and managing life closure
- Serving as an educator and mentor for staff
- Promoting a system of care that fosters timely access to palliative care services.
- A palliative care unit, with 10 single rooms, providing inpatient care for patients in acute stages of the disease
