Palliative Care Vs. Hospice Care: Different Kinds of Caring
Palliative care and hospice both help people with cancer have the best quality of life possible. However, they have key differences.
Palliative care focuses on improving your quality of life if you’re sick or undergoing medical treatment for a long-term or chronic illness. Anyone who needs it can receive palliative care, whether or not they are expected to die from their illness.
Hospice care, on the other hand, is end-of-life care. It’s a set of services for patients with a limited life expectancy.
Let’s explore these two essential kinds of care and how each type can help people with cancer throughout their disease process.
What’s the Difference Between Palliative Care and Hospice Care?
Why might you need them?
- Palliative care: Your doctor might suggest palliative care when you’re struggling with pain or other symptoms. Palliative care can also help with treatment side effects.
- Hospice: You might choose hospice care when you’ve decided to stop the chemotherapy, surgery or other cancer treatments that will help you recover from your disease. Maybe you need help with pain, or maybe you’re seeking other kinds of support, such as supplies and respite care for the family members looking after you.
When do they start?
- Palliative care: Palliative support can begin any time you ask for it, even as soon as you receive your diagnosis.
- Hospice: If Medicare covers your medical expenses, you cannot start hospice until you have a life expectancy of six months or less.
How long do they last?
- Palliative care: You can receive palliative care for as long as you need it. Your coverage varies with your insurance plan. Some people may receive palliative care and then move on to hospice, while others may recover.
- Hospice: While hospice care is intended to last six months or less, you may live longer than expected. If your doctor affirms that you still have a limited life expectancy, you may be qualified for continuing hospice care.
Who provides care?
Both: In addition to a doctor or nurse practitioner specifically trained in hospice and palliative medicine, you can receive hospice and palliative care support from chaplains, counselors, social workers and many other professionals.
What Does Palliative Care Offer Cancer Patients?
Living well with cancer isn’t always possible, but many people do achieve just that. Palliative care professionals help you live as well as you can with cancer or another serious illness.
People who begin receiving palliative care soon after their cancer diagnosis may live longer, according to the American Cancer Society. They may also experience fewer side effects from cancer and treatment.
Palliative care support includes:
- Advice about school and work issues related to your disease
- Help with advance directives, insurance and other forms
- Holistic care, such as music and art therapy
- Medical care to manage pain and other symptoms
- Mental health counseling
- Spiritual guidance and chaplaincy services
Hospice: Palliation Plus Wrap-Around Services
Often, hospice and palliative care work hand in hand. For example, your hospice may provide pain-relieving medications or supplemental oxygen.
In providing palliative treatment for symptom management, hospice helps in many other ways. Doctors, nurses, chaplains and social workers collaborate with you and your family to make sure you have everything you need, from advice about the dying process to disposable undergarments. Compassionate, practical support allows you to focus on what’s important in your last months or days.
Types of care hospice patients might receive include:
- Durable medical equipment and medical supplies
- Medications for symptom management
- Nutritional counseling
- Physical and occupational therapy
- Respite care, where a professional caregiver stays with a patient so family caregivers can rest
- Social work support
- Spiritual care and grief counseling
You can receive hospice services in a hospice center—a place offering end-of-life care in a peaceful setting—or in another location, such as your home or a skilled nursing facility.
The Bottom Line: Seek the Care You Need
Hospice and palliative care teams are here to help people with cancer live as well as they can through every step of their journey. Wherever you are on that journey, you’re always welcome to ask for help. Remember:
- Anyone with any life expectancy might need palliative care.
- You can receive palliative care alongside cancer treatments or as part of hospice care.
- If you go on hospice, you don’t receive curative treatment. Instead, hospice aims to make your end of life as easy as possible at every level—physical, emotional and spiritual.
Reach out to Capital Health Cancer Center’s Nurse and Patient Navigators to understand your options for palliative and hospice care.