Improving Quality of Life with a Cancer Diagnosis

Submitted by Hospice of Marion County

The American Cancer Society’s website states that “palliative care is focused on improving quality of life for people living with a serious illness like cancer. It can be given at any time from the point of diagnosis, throughout treatment and beyond.” Palliative Care is defined as supportive, comforting, soothing, calming and reassuring. Palliative, or what many now call supportive care, is specialized medical care for people with serious illnesses. Its focus is to provide relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress—whatever the cause or diagnosis, not just cancer. Whether you refer to it as palliative or supportive care, both are focused on helping patients living as well as possible for as long as possible, and research shows that patients who receive supportive care earlier in their diagnosis seem to fare better in quality of life.

Supportive care can help manage pain and symptom control, enabling you to enjoy a higher quality of life. This specialized comfort care is provided by a team of doctors, nurses and other specialists, who work together with a patient’s primary doctor and/or specialist to provide an extra layer of support. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness, and can be offered along with curative treatment. While undergoing medical treatments, you also need to carry on with life’s activities. You may need relief from:
• Pain
• Fatigue
• Nausea
• Loss of appetite
• Shortness of breath

How can this type of care help with a cancer diagnosis?
The Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer defines supportive care in cancer as “the prevention and management of the adverse effects of cancer and its treatment. This includes management of physical and psychosocial symptoms and side effects across the continuum of the cancer experience from diagnosis through treatment to post-treatment care. Enhancing rehabilitation, secondary cancer prevention, survivorship and end-of-life care are integral to supportive care.”

Because patients are carefully regulated by their physicians with consultations from experts in Supportive Care, patients can rest assured that their pain and symptoms can be managed (most within 24-48 hours) and their conditions monitored on an ongoing basis. The Supportive Care team can be called to:
• Aid in pain and symptom management
• Assist with relief of suffering – physical, emotional or psychosocial
• Discuss the course of disease and goals of care
• Assist attending physician, patient or family with clarification of development of your supportive plan of care
• Help establish the best possible quality of care as determined by patient and family
• Offer emotional support to patient and family, including anticipatory grief and bereavement counseling
• Review and complete documentation of advance directives
• Explain pros and cons of forgoing specific treatment and/or diagnostic treatments
• Facilitate transition to alternate care settings, such as home, nursing home or hospice when appropriate

Who can receive Supportive Care?
Patients with serious illnesses are appropriate for Supportive Care. It is available to help with pain management, relief of suffering and education on their disease progression and prognosis. As a holistic approach to care, it’s about a person’s whole being, including family and loved ones.

Supportive Care addresses the patient’s medical, emotional and spiritual needs. It offers support to patients and their caregivers. Open discussion between patients, families and healthcare professionals is encouraged in determining the patient’s goals and medical plan of care. As a patient’s disease progresses, the Supportive Care team adjusts its services as those needs change. This special type of comfort care makes a better quality of life possible for patients and their loved ones by providing the best possible plan of care.

What is the role of the Supportive Care team?
It’s to assess the best management methods for pain and symptom control, which is recommended to the referring physician for follow up.

How is Supportive Care paid?
It is covered by Medicare, Medicaid and most private insurances. A consult is available through one’s own physician or by calling for information about receiving services.

Who can refer a patient to Supportive Care?
Anyone can request Supportive Care if the outcome from surgery, accident or disease has left them in physical or mental distress. Supportive Care improves healthcare quality in three significant ways. It:
1. effectively relieves physical symptoms and emotional suffering,
2. strengthens patient-family-physician communication and decision-making, and
3. ensures well-coordinated care across healthcare settings.

Physicians can refer a patient by calling the Carewell Supportive Care office at (352) 291-5881; the office is open 8:00 a.m. -5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday. If the patient is in a hospital, nursing home or assisted living facility, physicians may write an order in the facility for a consult. The mission of Carewell Supportive Care is to provide exceptional compassionate symptom management to relieve suffering and improve quality of life. Learn more by calling or visit www.carewellsupportivecare.com.