Palliative care

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"It's not the thought of dying that bothers me, I just don't want to be there when it happens" - Woody Allen

This area of medicine which deals with symptom control and is non-curative. Essentially, patients who are dying and lengthening life takes second place to making sure they are comfortable. It is hugely based on a multidisciplinary team approach. Some say "Palliative care is helping dying people to live". Or as Raj put it, "Palliative care is stopping people from dying in such a shitty way".

Key conditions

According to a tutorial we had, the key areas to deal with:

Learn about those, and that's it.

"Mrs Jones, I'm afraid I have some bad news..."

Learning to break bad news is a key part of palliative care. We don't think its really the thing to learn out of a book; get together with a mate, and try telling them seriously a few times "I'm afraid we have the test results back, and I'm afraid they show that you have Leukaemia." Use your brains, be sensitive and you'll learn a lot. You can find some more tips on this website.

Emergencies in palliative care