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Palliative
care team helps patients and providers
Several weeks ago, I had the privilege
of spending an afternoon with the Emory Pallia-tive Care Services
Team. As the service’s literature will tell you, palliative
care provides “comprehensive interdisciplinary care, focusing
primarily on promoting quality of life for patients living with
a serious, chronic, or terminal illness and for their families,
thus assuring physical comfort and psychosocial support.”
If these words could only capture what the palliative care team
does with and for patients and families every day. . .
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My tour was conducted by Pete Basler,
COO of both Wesley Woods Center and the Center for Rehabilitation
Medicine, along with Dr. Melissa Mahoney and palliative nursing
coordinator Donna Arena. The service is co-directed by Drs. Mahoney
and Stephanie Grossman, both board-certified physicians in palliative
care within our Emory Hospital Medicine Unit, which is directed
by Dr. Mark Williams.
Our first stop was a meeting with
nurse and physician staff on the transplant unit. There was impassioned
discussion of their mission in helping ensure success and recovery
for patients undergoing major and difficult surgeries. Because we
now have a team dedicated to minimizing pain and other symptoms,
such as nausea, breathing difficulty, fatigue, and depression, our
patients recover better and families cope better. In partnership
with the palliative care team, the transplant unit staff are able
to provide higher-quality care and better support for patients and
their families.
Our next stop was a cancer unit. There
we met with nursing staff and an oncology resident, who talked about
a patient who was weighing the pros and cons of aggressive treatment
for a difficult cancer. Essentially, the patient wanted to know,
“Would the cure be worse than the disease?” The resident
had come face to face with how important palliative care is to patients
and how its availability helps expand the possibilities for finding
effective treatments. This patient was not averse to taking risks
and to pursuing the most aggressive course. But he needed to know
what could and would be done to ensure that he wouldn’t suffer
unnecessary pain and other debilitating discomforts in the process.
The fact that Emory Healthcare has a palliative care team, with
the latest expertise in relieving physical and other forms of suffering,
provides much needed confidence and support—not only for patients
and their families but also for nursing and medical professionals
throughout our system who help patients face tough conditions and
decisions every day.
Our palliative care service is a relatively
new and multidisciplinary unit within Emory Healthcare. It brings
nurses and physicians with expertise in palliative care together
with specialists in anesthesia, pharmacy, social work, pastoral
care, and other areas. The team is able to augment the scope of
clinical services, enabling us to provide optimal care, support,
and comfort in ethical and appropriate ways to patients and their
families as they make decisions about sustaining life and quality
of life at vulnerable points in their lives. Overall, palliative
care is moving our culture toward a point where we can more easily
and humanely deal with the end of life.
It is especially gratifying that the
proposal for this service was originally presented in a project
by fellows in the Woodruff Leadership Academy. Through the WLA,
we are striving to develop and enable leaders and leadership skills
within the Woodruff Health Sciences Center. The success of this
project offers a strong confirmation of our mission and new hope
for our patients.
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