Palliative Care for Professionals

What is Palliative Care?

Quote as a image: Living as well as you can as long as you can

Palliative care is specialized medical care for people living with a serious illness. This type of care is focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of the illness. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family.

  • Palliative care is provided by a specially-trained team of doctors, nurses and other specialists who work together with a patient’s other doctors to provide an extra layer of support.
  • Palliative care is based on the needs of the patient, not on the patient’s prognosis.
  • This care is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness, and it can be provided along with curative treatment.

Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC, 2019)

Palliative Care is sometimes referred to as Supportive or Concurrent Care, and provides strong support for individuals and their loved ones with a serious illness or condition, or have complex health issues. It is not the same as hospice care, and individuals using this benefit can continue to receive curative treatments as desired. Comfort-directed services are focused to help people manage the symptoms and stresses of serious illness. Contact each health plan for further details on this beneficial service. (More at Where to find Palliative Care in Hawai‘i)


Resources: To promote palliative care referrals

Goal: To increase patient referrals to palliative care

We have compiled resources to facilitate patient referrals to Palliative Care.

Resources Include:

We are available to meet with your team to review resource tools plus review a referral workflow developed for HMSA patients.


Resources

GetPalliativeCare.org

For good Palliative Care resources for the professionals and the public visit GetPalliativeCare.Org. It is an online resource for patients and families that focuses solely on providing information on palliative care from the point of diagnosis. Edited and maintained by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC).

Webinars

All webinars are currently listed on our dedicated webinar webpage and our eNewsletter with a variety of topics.


New Resource: Palliative Care Fast Facts

Published every Friday by the Palliative Care Network of Wisconsin “Palliative Care Fast Facts” are edited by Sean Marks, MD; Associate Professor of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

With over 500 entries they can be read on the web or downloaded as a PDF file, covering a wide range of topics including “How to help a patient choose a surrogate decision maker“. 

Other topics include:pain, non-pain symptoms, communication, prognosis, hospice, Palliative Care consultation, etc. You can see a complete listing and/or sign up at https://www.mypcnow.org/fast-facts/


Palliative Care for the public

We are adding resources to the Palliative Care for Professionals page as they become available or recommended by our committees and the community. If you know of any resource that should be listed here, please drop us a line


Dr Daniel Fischberg, a well known physician at Queen’s Medical Center gives a short overview of palliative care and how it helped his patient in Hawai‘i.


A short green stripe of a ti leaf as a divider

Palliative Care Presentation focusing on Hawai‘i on our YouTube Channel


2021 June: Hawaii Palliative Care Virtual Summit 2021 presenting MedQUEST Proposed Palliative Care Benefit

MedQuest (Hawaii Medicaid) presented their proposed palliative care benefit, a first-of-its kind in the country at our Hawaii Palliative Care Virtual Summit in June of 2021.

A MedQUEST palliative care benefit could significantly improve how we in Hawai‘i care for some of our most complex and seriously ill family, friends, and neighbors. More information and video recording with slides and time code for all presentations.


2021 March: Innovations in Palliative Care

Our partners at Hawaii Care Choices are providing high quality palliative care in their rural community through a series of innovations in Hilo, Hawaii. Our Monthly Meeting in March 2021 is a talk-story session with Lani Weigert, Community Relations Manager and Cara Sadira, Community Liaison implementing the programs and experiencing first hand the real change happening. Watch the video Innovations in Palliative Care on our YouTube channel.


Mapping Palliative Care in Hawai‘i

In order to map palliative care across Hawaii, a survey was conducted from January to July 2020 to determine the availability of in-patient, out-patient and community based options. Read the report from July 2020


2020 April 25 Hawaii State Palliative Care Summit

Our very successful 2020 Palliative Care Summit brought key stakeholders together for an overview of the current state of palliative care in Hawai‘i. More and video recording.




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