Palliative Emergencies

Emergencies arise in the palliative care settings, as in another other part of medicine.  After all, generally speaking, our patients are often the sickest and thus are more prone to events that incite panic, or require rapid response. We cannot address every emergency in detail - and they will be reviewed other months, other years, or in case presentations that anyone can present this month.

The month we review the approach to care when these emergencies arise: how to identify them, how to respond – tending to the needs of patient, family, and staff.  As in any other part of palliative care, “it takes a village” of our interdisciplinary team members. 

We'll discuss the patients' and their family's experience these emergencies to any number of settings:
  1. In hospital
  2. In emergency rooms
  3. At home
  4. On the streets when homeless, in refugee camps
How different would this be (for the patient, the family, and for you) in these different settings?

If outside of the hospital or emergency room – When would you consider bringing a patient to hospital or inpatient under the “GIP” (general inpatient) level-of-care with the hospice benefit?  How would you respond to a family on the phone caring for patient going through this?  If you were the clinician in the home, what would you do?  If you were on the phone, on call, speaking with the nurse, or social worker, or chaplain, or aide, or family member, how would you guide them? 

I’d like to invite to the discussion, concepts of psychosocial and spiritual emergencies in these settings, as well as our usual medically-focused crises.  Please feel free to post a case of such an emergency.

Articles


How the Palliative Care approach differs from the typical Oncologic Approach:

On cord compression-

On Bleeding-

On agitation & delirium-

On witnessing this suffering-