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Palliative care focuses on delivering the best quality of care for managing the illness that the patients and families deal with daily. Through this integrated program, specialized care offered includes:
- Symptom management
- Pain management
- Physical and mental stress management and healing
- Advanced care planning
Our interdisciplinary palliative care team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and includes a physician certified in Hospice/Palliative Medicine, an Advanced Practice Nurse, a palliative care nurse, a social worker, a medical office assistant and a chaplain. As our program grows, this team will eventually include specialists like music therapists, art therapists, and other healing therapists.
Advance Directives
An advance directive is a document that an individual can fill to make their medical and healthcare decisions be known if, in the future, they are unable to make those decisions. The document must be completed when the individual is competent and of sound mind. There are three types of advance directives:
- Health care proxy
- Living will
- Medical orders for life sustaining therapies (MOLST)
At Terrace View, we can work with patients at the appropriate time to put these advance directives in place.
Other Projects of the Advanced Illness Management and Palliative Care Program
The Conversation Project is a national public engagement campaign encouraging individuals to have meaningful conversations with their loved ones about their wishes and preferences for end-of-life care. The program aims to educate our community on the process that occurs once a patient is no longer able to express their wishes. More often than not, patients are unable to voice their wishes and family members are left having to guess at what they think their loved one would want for end-of-life care. The goal of the Conversation Project is to change the cultural norm of not discussing death and dying to opening the door to meaningful conversations.
For more information, click here or email Chloe Emerling at Cemerling@ecmc.edu.