Palliative Care

What is palliative care? The word palliate means to make comfortable. Palliative care includes pain and symptom management, and support for caregivers. Palliative care can help a patient at any stage of a serious illness, even as early as the time of diagnosis.

Palliative Care Services-offered by HPCG

Palliative Care Services (PCS): PCS is a medical specialty team which offers patients goals-of-care discussions, relief of pain and other symptoms of serious illness at any stage of the illness. PCS is available, upon doctor's orders, in Greensboro hospitals, assisted-living and long-term-care communities.

PCS at Moses H. Cone Hospital and Wesley Long Community Hospital offers a hospital-based team to address the needs of hospitalized patients, upon doctor's orders. The PCS team is composed of:

• Physician
• Nurse practitioner
• Nurse liaison
• Social worker
• Chaplain
• Grief counselor

PCS in long-term-care communities offers a specialized medical team that focuses on treating pain, stress and other symptoms of illness and its treatment, upon doctor's orders. In long-term-care communities our PCS team is composed of:

• Physician
• Nurse practitioner

Who can benefit from palliative care?

Patients with life-limiting illness (diagnoses could include, but are not limited to):

• Cancer
• COPD
• Cardiac disease
• Dementia
• HIV/AIDS
• Liver disease
• Persistent coma
• Renal disease
• Stroke

Patients with uncontrolled physical symptoms (which can include, but are not limited to):

• Pain
• Insomnia
• Anxiety
• Dyspnea (shortness of breath)
• Nausea (+/- vomiting)
• Agitation
• Cough
• Severe Dysphagia (difficulty swallowing)
• Delirium

Patients and/or families wishing to discuss:

• Advanced care planning
• Withdrawal of mechanical ventilation
• Goals of therapy and /or artificial nutrition
• Comfort-directed therapy