Our Palliative Care Service incorporates the principles of palliative care into the treatment of all patients with cancer from the time of diagnosis, not only in the setting of advanced or terminal disease. Members of the service work alongside the oncologists who are treating the cancer, seeking to ease distress while remaining mindful of patient and family needs, values, beliefs, and culture.
To provide the best palliative care possible, the service may call on individuals from specialties such as interventional/anesthesia pain management, rehabilitation medicine, psychiatry and behavioral science, integrative medicine, chaplaincy, social work, pharmacy, wound care, radiation oncology, and neurology. This interdisciplinary approach allows us to provide care that improves quality of life for patients as well as their families.
A guiding principle at KIMS is that access to pain relief is a basic human right. Fortunately, pain related to cancer can be managed effectively in most patients. Pain management is one component of a broad, symptom-management approach for patients at every stage of treatment and includes the following :
Constant Pain Monitoring
KIMS nurses are trained in pain assessment and pain management. Inpatients are asked every four hours whether they are experiencing pain, and they are encouraged to report pain to their nurse or doctor whenever it occurs. Patients rate the intensity on a scale of 0 to 10, and every effort is made to provide painkilling treatments as needed.
Help with Pain Care at Home
Because hospital stays are often short, patients treated for cancer often experience pain once they've returned home. KIMS outpatient clinics and supportive care help patients, caregivers, local clinicians, and community pharmacists control pain that extends beyond the hospital stay.
We provide support to patients who require pain management that extends beyond the hospital stay. The program's acute pain nurses, or APNs, with support from the Pain and Palliative Care Service interdisciplinary team, consult with patients, caregivers, local clinicians, and community pharmacists, offering their expertise in reducing pain and controlling other symptoms experienced by patients after leaving the hospital.
We continue to make significant contributions to the understanding and effective treatment of pain, including: identifying pain syndromes specific to cancer patients; tracing the neurologic mechanisms of pain, and the relationship of social and psychological factors with pain; establishing accurate methods of pain assessment and correlating levels of treatment with the pain relief they provide.
Pediatric Palliative care is specialized medical care for children with cancer. It focuses on providing relief from the symptoms, pain, and stress. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the child and the family. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage of an illness and can be provided along with treatment meant to cure. It relieves the symptoms of diseases, such as pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite and difficulty sleeping. In short, it helps the child and the family gain the strength to carry on with daily life. It is best to start palliative care as early as possible. This benefits both the child and the family by relieving the symptoms, pain and emotional wear-and-tear that can make facing a serious illness so difficult for your child and your family caregivers alike.
