Palliative care is an essential component of healthcare, designed to enhance quality of life for individuals facing serious illnesses. Rather than solely focusing on end-of-life care, palliative support is about comfort, dignity, and holistic well-being, ensuring people with life-limiting illnesses and their families receive compassionate and person-centred care at every stage of illness.  

Despite its profound benefits, misconceptions surrounding palliative care persist. Many believe it is only available in hospice settings or that choosing it means abandoning treatment. However, palliative care is integrative and supportive, working alongside curative or disease modifying treatments to ease symptoms, reduce stress, and empower people to live more fully.  

By raising awareness of palliative care, advocating for interdisciplinary collaboration, and improving access to palliative care resources, we can ensure that people receiving care, caregivers, and healthcare teams understand the full scope of palliative care – helping individuals receive the support they need in a way that honours their choices, preferences, and values.

Understanding Palliative Care

Palliative care is specialized care for individuals with serious illnesses, focusing on comfort and quality of life rather than curative treatment alone. It is rooted in a holistic approach that addresses not only physical symptoms but also emotional, social, and spiritual needs.  

WHO Definition of Palliative Care

According to the World Health Organization (WHO)¹, palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients – adults and children – and their families who are facing problems associated with life-threatening illness. It prevents and relieves suffering through the early identification, impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, whether physical, psychosocial, or spiritual.

Palliative care:

• provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms;
• affirms life and regards dying as a normal process;
• intends neither to hasten nor postpone death;
• integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care;
• offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death;
• offers a support system to help the family cope during a patient’s illness and their own bereavement;
• uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated;
• will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness; and
• is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications.

Myths vs. Realities of Palliative Care

• Myth: Palliative care is only for end of life situations.

☑️ Reality: Palliative care can be integrated at any stage of a serious illness – including alongside curative or disease modifying treatments. Patients receiving chemotherapy, dialysis, or heart treatments can also benefit from palliative care to help manage symptoms and improve overall well-being.  

• Myth: Choosing palliative care means giving up on treatment.

☑️Reality: Receiving palliative care does not mean stopping medical treatment – it enhances comfort and quality of life while ensuring choices and goals are supported. Many individuals receive palliative care while continuing treatments for chronic or life-limiting conditions.  

• Myth: Palliative care is only provided in specialized settings.

☑️Reality: Palliative care is available in hospitals, long-term care facilities, clinics, and at home – ensuring people with life-limiting illnesses receive support in settings that align with their needs and preferences.

• Myth: Palliative care is only for cancer patients.

☑️Reality: Palliative care is beneficial for individuals with many conditions, including heart disease, respiratory illnesses, kidney failure, dementia, and neurological disorders.  

• Myth: Palliative care only addresses physical pain.

☑️Reality: Palliative care is holistic, supporting individuals through emotional distress, anxiety, spiritual concerns, and family dynamics, ensuring comprehensive well-being.

The Power of Collaborative Care

Palliative care thrives on interdisciplinary teamwork, ensuring patients receive comprehensive, person-centred support that addresses all aspects of their well-being. Each profession offers unique perspectives, and each professional contributes in unique ways to the team. Having said that, there is also an overlap, in that all professionals strive to address holistic needs. There is a great power that comes from working with a team including: physicians, nurses, personal support workers, social workers, counsellors, chaplains, dieticians, pharmacists.

The success of palliative care relies on effective communication, ensuring that care recipients, families, and care providers work together in shared decision-making. When a team of interdisciplinary healthcare professionals collaborate together on care, then the person and their family are more likely to receive holistic, compassionate support tailored to their unique needs.  

Case Example: A multidisciplinary palliative team supporting a patient with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) may include a neurologist for understanding disease progression and helping with symptom management, a nurse for assessment of the persons’ needs and issues, a PSW for hands-on support, a counsellor for psychosocial support, and a social worker to assist the family with accessing resources. This team-based approach helps to ensure that needs are addressed.

Breaking Barriers and Raising Awareness

Despite its benefits, many people with life-limiting illnesses and their families in Canada lack awareness of palliative care or hesitate to seek support due to stigma and misconceptions. Raising awareness is crucial to ensuring greater accessibility and improved patient experiences.  

Challenges to Palliative Care Access:

• Misinformation about eligibility – Many people do not realize palliative care can be helpful at any stage of illness.  
• Lack of training for healthcare providers – Not all professionals have received education to help them develop palliative care competencies required to provide palliative care.  
• Limited resources – Some communities lack access to palliative care services due to funding gaps and geographic barriers, particularly in rural and remote areas.

Solutions and Advocacy:

• Policy improvements  
  • Expanding access and funding for palliative care through federal and provincial initiatives.
  • Mandating palliative care competencies be integrated in the core curriculum for all health care providers.
• Public education
  • Informing the public about palliative care, and the benefits of early palliative interventions.  
• Workplace education
  • Increasing palliative care education in all health care settings.
  • Encouraging professionals to integrate a palliative approach to care

Through changes in public policy and education, healthcare providers will be more prepared to offer palliative care and integrate a palliative approach earlier, for people with any life-limiting illness, and across all care settings. At the same time, those with life-limiting illnesses and their families will seek out palliative care services, request palliative care consults, and expect to receive palliative care when needed.

Advancing Compassionate Care Together

Palliative care is about dignity, comfort, and ensuring every individual receives support tailored to their needs and values. By embracing interdisciplinary collaboration and breaking misconceptions, we can ensure that patients receive the best possible care throughout their journey.  

How you can make a difference

• Policymakers  
  • Require that national palliative care competencies are integrated in core curriculum for all health care providers.
  • Ensure equitable access to palliative care and/or the integration of a palliative approach in all settings.
• Healthcare professionals  
  • Advocate for palliative care, and/or the integration of a palliative approach in all care settings, for people with any life limiting illness.
  • Advocate for equity in palliative care and remove barriers.  
• Families and caregivers  
  • Learn about palliative care
  • Find out about the palliative care resources in your community
  • Request a palliative care consult when experiencing difficulties with symptom management, concerns re disease progression, or psychosocial issues
  • Engage in conversations about serious illness, disease progression, and advance care planning

By prioritizing compassion, collaboration, and awareness, we can reshape perceptions of palliative care – making it more accessible and ensuring no one faces serious illness alone.  

Life and Death Matters: Advocating for Palliative Care

Life and Death Matters is a leading organization dedicated to advocating for palliative care and providing palliative care resources to educate healthcare professionals, caregivers, and communities. Their mission is to ensure that individuals facing serious illnesses receive this compassionate, person-centred support.

How Life and Death Matters is Making a Difference:

• Advocacy for palliative care – Promoting awareness and understanding of palliative care through educational community outreach. For example, Palliative Care Talks is a series of discussions and webinars developed by Hospice Palliative Care Ontario, hosted by the CEO and founder of Life and Death Matters, Kath Murray, looking at current issues pertaining to palliative care.
• Training courses – Offering specialized training programs for healthcare providers and caregivers to enhance their ability to deliver effective palliative care. For example, PACE for PSWs, developed in a collaboration with the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association, Hospice Palliative Care Ontario, and Life and Death Matters, is an online program designed to empower Personal Support Workers with palliative care competencies.
• Educational materials – Providing accessible palliative care resources, including texts, workbooks, podcast and video library, instructor resources including instructors’ guide and PPTs. For example, Life and Death Matter’s textbook for PSWs, “Integrating a Palliative Approach: Essentials for Personal Support Workers”, and companion resources.

References

1 https://www.who.int/europe/news-room/fact-sheets/item/palliative-care