Kokua Mau

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.

Palliative Care Messaging Tools for Hawaiʻi

Since 2021, Kōkua Mau’s Palliative Care Awareness Committee has been working to better understand palliative care in Hawaiʻi and how to educate both providers and the public. We since developed materials and messaging for both providers and the public. Please visit our (growing) Palliative Care Messaging for Hawaiʻi webpage.

New Resource: Palliative Care PR: Exploring new message strategies

Dr. Rubenstein uses a series of animated videos and social media to start conversations about challenging topics in health care, including palliative care, racism, mental health, and gender equity. To date, his videos have been viewed more than 200,000 times, and are used internationally for education and advocacy.

To give you a taste: His first video, Palliative Care: We’re the fire department not the fire, has been seen over 61,000 times (and counting).

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).

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/

Webinars

Webinars are currently listed in our eNewsletter, and some in our calendar, with a variety of topics.

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

Palliative Care for the public

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.

Palliative Care for Patients and Families
Is Palliative Care Right for Me
What Palliative Care Can Do
Palliative Care Video Stories
Where to find Palliative Care in Hawai‘i
Palliative Care for Professionals

Note: These links are being provided as a convenience and for informational purposes only; they do not constitute an endorsement or an approval by the Kōkua Mau of any of the products, services or opinions of the corporation, organization or individual. Kōkua Mau bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality or content of the external site or for that of subsequent links. Contact the external site for answers to questions regarding its content.