A Palliative Approach to Care is essential in primary health care, where trusted relationships and early conversations between health care providers, patients and chosen families can make a significant difference. By integrating this approach into routine practice, primary health care teams can provide holistic, person-centered care that begins well before the final stages of illness. It helps manage symptoms proactively, align care with patient goals, reduce unnecessary hospital visits, and support caregivers. Embedding a palliative approach to care in primary health care ensures that more patients receive compassionate, coordinated care closer to home and aligned with what matters most to them.
Palliative care is not just about end-of-life. It focuses on quality of life and what is meaningful and important to the person and chosen family throughout the illness, not just at end of life or when treatment options are limited. All practitioners can contribute to a palliative approach to care by ensuring care is guided by the patients' priorities and personal values, giving patients, and chosen families a greater sense of control.
The palliative care approach recognizes that, in a health care system focused on cure and treatment, people may not be given the opportunity to talk about their goals of care or be fully informed about their illness and prognosis.
From diagnosis and throughout the illness, the palliative care approach focuses primarily on:
- Open and sensitive communication
- Advance care planning, including discussing treatment options and determining level of intervention
- Psychosocial and spiritual support to help the person and family with any issues related to the illness
- Optimizing pain or symptom management
- Engage specialty palliative care providers when needed for support with challenging physical, psychosocial, or spiritual symptoms
The Palliative Approach to Care Practice Support Program includes tools, resources, education, and training opportunities for PHC providers to build a palliative approach to care in their practice.
