O I May/June 2003 37 Building a Palliative CareProgram

The development of multidisciplinary palliative care services offers community cancer centers the opportunity to: Improve their quality of care and patient satisfaction Provide better planning for end-of-life care Manage symptoms that impede the quality of life Control pain that does not respond easily to medication. In addition, once they are established, palliative care programs can improve a cancer center’s bottom line. Although palliative care programs were developed primarily for patients with serious illnesses, any patient who is suffering from physical or emotional symptoms that impact quality of life can benefit from palliative care. Patients who work with a palliative care team receive serv-ices that are more con-sistent with their per-sonal preferences. They are also more likely to have an end-of-life plan and more likely to die in the setting of their choice than those who do not receive this intervention.1 Palliative care is certainly appropriate for patients with cancer who are recognized as terminal, but the World Health Organization (WHO) states that “many aspects of pallia-tive care are also appli-cable earlier in the course of the ill-ness in conjunction with anticancer treatment. ” For instance, a young woman who has a suspicious breast mass should have treatment for her procedure-related pain and support to cope with her fears that she will die before her children grow up. Palliative support becomes even more important as illness advances. Our medical system teaches us to diagnose and cure a patient’s problem. We often do not ask ourselves what will happen if our treatments don’t work; but patients and families are concerned about this possibility right from th