Palliative care in an acute setting provides relief from pain and discomfort while patients receive treatment for an illness or disease. While the main goal of medicine is to cure or control disease, there is an undeniable need to focus attention and resources on issues such as pain and symptom relief – conditions directly related to a patient’s quality of life during treatment.

Acute palliative care seeks to ease a patient’s distress while remaining mindful of patient and family needs, values, beliefs and culture. It can be provided not only by doctors and nurses but by pharmacists, mental health professionals, social workers, physical therapists and chaplains.

Palliative care is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness, from the time of diagnosis onward. It can be delivered with curative treatment; however it is more commonly provided to patients with later-stage disease.

At Sydney Adventist Hospital we primarily only provide acute palliative care for our cancer patients.