HEALTHCARE ACCESS: Palliative care awareness critically low despite its recognition as a human right
Greater awareness and understanding of palliative care are urgently needed to ensure that people with life-limiting illness can access the compassionate, dignified care they have a right to.
Despite palliative care being recognised as a human right, awareness and understanding of this essential care remains critically low. Palliative care is defined as an approach that improves the quality of life for patients and their families facing life-threatening illness by preventing and relieving suffering through early identification and treatment of pain and other physical, psychosocial and spiritual problems.
This approach requires a dedicated inter-disciplinary team of professionals, such as nurses, doctors, nurses, and more, working together to support the whole person and their family throughout the journey of illness.
Palliative care can be provided in various settings, including hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities, and homes, and should be available wherever the patient needs care. It is a complex intervention that can be seen as a puzzle, with care being individualised to meet the specific needs of each person. To provide comprehensive palliative care, care must be optimised across physical, psychological, social, and spiritual domains, and not limited to just a few components.
Research suggests that palliative care should be started early in the disease course to positively affect quality of life for as long as possible. Palliative care complements all disease-directed medical care and is essential in supporting the management of physical symptoms, such as pain, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue.
While palliative medicine specialists play a crucial role in leading quality standards for medical care, there is a global shortage of such specialists. Therefore, it is advocated that all doctors should be trained in basic palliative care as a minimum requirement.
In South Africa, efforts have been made to advance basic palliative care training at undergraduate and post-qualification levels. However, more work is needed to ensure that basic palliative care is not confused with specialist palliative medicine. Early palliative medicine involvement is essential for anticipating and preventing potential suffering, including careful discussions and advance care planning. By addressing anticipated symptoms early, patients and families can be empowered, rather than disempowered.
Written by urgent.news from Daily Maverick's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
