Understanding Palliative Medicine

AMOREM’s Service Podcast serves the mission to provide quality, thoughtful, loving care to patients and support to their families and to offer education and grief support to communities served. This podcast is intended to transform the way that people view and experience serious illness and end-of-life.

In episode eight of AMOREM’s Service Podcast, Understanding Palliative Medicine, Nurse Practitioner, Brandi Newell, assists in a deep dive on palliative medicine services that are offered through AMOREM and how these services support families and their loved ones who are living with a serious illness.

Newell begins the conversation by stressing the point that palliative medicine is a collaborative service between AMOREM care teams and providers or doctors that a patient may already be seeing. She emphasizes that palliative care is not intended to take the place of a current provider, but rather to work with current providers to optimize the quality of a patient’s life. Palliative care teams can support through offering resources, symptom management or anything else that may be required to bridge the gap.

Palliative medicine teams are intended to visit the patient’s home, or wherever they may call home, once every 1-3 months. Sometimes, a patient’s needs require the care team to visit the home more often than this. Newell explains that these visits are in place to ensure that the patient is receiving proper support, whether that may be simply going through their medication to clarify any questions a patient may have about their prescriptions or to discuss the patient and family’s goals of care.

Often, palliative medicine is provided to an individual who has a life expectancy of 2 years or fewer. Newell explains that early integration to palliative medicine is crucial. For patients with this prognosis, palliative medicine is most beneficial and patients and families receive the most support if they are able to integrate palliative medicine into their plan of care at an early stage of their illness. Newell explains that the earlier someone onboards a palliative medicine team, the more resources and support they are able to receive and a deeper connection with the care team can be developed. She also stresses the impact that early integration can have on taking a large load off of the patient’s primary caregivers and family members.

Newell walks through some of the most common symptoms that she sees in her patients. She explains that many of the symptoms are dependent on the specific illness that the patient has been diagnosed with but, most commonly, she sees things like restlessness, anxiety, shortness of breath, nausea, fatigue, constipation and pain.

Another element that Newell focuses on is assisting patients with symptom management and pain management. She clarifies that there are multiple interventions that can be offered to support a patient with symptom and pain management. Often-times, a patient can experience anxiety or depression due to their diagnosis and this is an area that palliative care stays on top of with patients and their families. She finds that many times, a patient’s pain level correlates to their anxiety levels. Once the anxiety and/or depression is managed, the pain can seem less severe to a patient.

In terms of tackling the emotional elements and symptoms of an illness, Newell explains that the palliative care team can reach out to AMOREM’s hospice medical social workers and hospice chaplains. The social workers are able to assist in connecting patients and their families with community resources to help manage the emotional elements and any advance care planning that may need to be put in place as things become more serious. Hospice chaplains can act as an extra layer of support and provide patients and their families with someone who they can talk to and build a layer of trust and compassion with.

Newell also explains that a large portion of palliative medicine is helping to educate patients and their families about their illness, any medications that they have been provided with and any additional resources that will benefit the patient and family.

A large element of any care provided by AMOREM teams is empowering and encouraging the patient to make their wishes be known and for the patient to understand that they are in full control of their plan of care. Newell explains that this requires the care team to fully listen to the patient and meet them exactly where they are at. She uses the analogy that the patient is operating a train and the palliative medicine team is simply there to help navigate the route ahead.

If you or someone that you know could benefit from AMOREM services, please visit www.amoremsupport.org or contact a team member at 828.754.0101. 

AMOREM’s Service Podcast is proudly brought to you by AMOREM, your local, nonprofit, hospice and palliative care provider. AMOREM has provided services to the community for more than 40 years, formerly as Burke Hospice and Palliative Care and Caldwell Hospice and Palliative Care, and has served the High Country for more than 10 years. To learn more or to make a referral, visit www.amoremsupport.org or call 828.754.0101 to speak with a local team member.