If you are living with a child who has a life-limiting illness, you may be wondering how to best manage the pain and symptoms of the disease.
Palliative care Melbourne is a specialised type of medical treatment that focuses on managing pain, providing support, and improving the quality of life for individuals with serious illnesses. This article will help you understand what palliative care is, why it’s important for your child and family and how to access it.
What does palliative care involve?
Palliative care is a team approach to providing relief from the symptoms and stress of a serious illness. The palliative care team includes doctors, nurses, other medical professionals, social workers, and counselors who are focused on improving the quality of life for patients and families.
This can involve many things, including:
- Helping you understand your child’s diagnosis.
- Providing emotional support to you and your family as you come to terms with your child’s condition or situation (e.g., knowing what to expect).
- Supporting your wishes regarding aggressive treatments if they aren’t working well enough; this may include pain medication like morphine or another strong opioid drug that can make patients feel better even when they’re suffering physically or emotionally.
- This type of treatment doesn’t cure them but helps them cope with their pain until death comes naturally someday soon—in some cases within just hours or days after starting treatment!
Does my child need to be in a hospital to receive palliative care?
Yes, your child may benefit from palliative care if they are in a hospital. Palliative care is a team approach to care that includes doctors, nurses, social workers, and other specialists.
The team will work with your child’s primary care doctor to create a treatment plan that considers all aspects of your child’s health including:
- Nutrition and hydration
- Breathing support (ventilator)
- Pain management
Will choosing palliative care affect my child’s other treatments and options?
Palliative care is not a replacement for any other treatments, but it can help to manage pain and other symptoms. It also helps you and your child to decide if new or ongoing treatment would be helpful.
Sometimes, palliative care Melbourne may mean that your child will stop getting treatment that is helping them stay alive longer. However, this decision will always be based on what’s best for your child’s health and quality of life.
For example: If a medication is causing side effects that are hard to manage at home, palliative care can help you figure out how to manage those side effects so they don’t keep your child from doing the things they want to do with family and friends during their last days or weeks of life.
If someone has cancer that has spread throughout the body (called metastatic cancer), palliative care doctors might suggest trying an experimental drug therapy if there are few other options available. Palliative medicine doctors work closely with medical directors at these cancer centers so patients get better access to these experimental therapies if needed during their last months or years of life.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to learn more about palliative care, don’t hesitate to ask your doctor. Palliative care is available in many countries around the world and is becoming increasingly common as an option for children with life-limiting illnesses.
