Palliative Care Week: 8 to 14 September 2019

What is Palliative Care?

 

Palliative care focuses on helping a person, of any age, with a life-limiting illness to live well; seeking to help them achieve the best quality of life as their illness progresses. Palliative care can help people who are living with a life-limiting illness for a long time as well as people who are in the last days or weeks of life. Some people live with their condition for years and have extended periods of being well. People can move in and out of palliative care services as their needs change

 

What does palliative care do?

 

• provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms;
• affirms life and regards dying as a normal process;
• intends neither to hasten or postpone death;
• integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care;
• offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death;
• offers a support system to help the family cope during the patients illness and in their own bereavement;
• uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated;
• will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness

 

Palliative Care Week

 

Palliative Care Week aims to raise awareness of the difference palliative care can make to people with life-limiting conditions, carers and families throughout the island of Ireland. The All Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care (AIIHPC) works with partners and colleagues across the palliative care sector and with other organisations and individuals interested in health and wellbeing to facilitate an annual Palliative Care Week.

 

 

2019 – Surrounding You with Support

 

 

The theme for the Palliative Care Week 2019 campaign is Palliative Care: Surrounding You With Support. Palliative Care Week takes place from 8 to 14 September.

 

 

For this year’s campaign we are focusing on how people with palliative care needs are being supported by the whole community. This includes support from GPs, from hospice, hospital, nursing home, and a wider community involvement beyond formal health and social care services.

 

More information about Palliative Care Week is available here

For more information, please contact Ann Leahy, AIIHPC Project Manager, on ann.leahy@aiihpc.org or call the office on 00353 1 491 2948.