August 1, 2018 – Choosing Palliative Care

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Anchor lead: Palliative care may assure that end of life goals are met, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Is your physician comfortable talking about end of life issues? If not you could be in for a lot more intervention at the end of life than you want, a recent study showed. Rab Razzak, a palliative care expert at Johns Hopkins, says one strategy is to make sure you get a consult with the palliative care team, hopefully before you really need one.

Razzak: With palliative care there certainly could be a lot more support in addition to oncology care. Depending on where people are located and the type of palliative care there is. There are some home-based programs there are some programs that actually reach out via telehealth and other modalities. So I think depending on where people live you’ve got to find out what’s there. Doing some research, so getting on www.getpalliativecare.org can be very helpful it’s a great resource for patients. And there you can actually look up where programs are.  :33

Razzak says the need is greater than the availability in many places, so finding resources early is key. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.