What are the Differences Between Hospice and Palliative Care?
It’s very easy to confuse hospice and palliative care, given that they are usually used with each other. However, despite their commonalities, these terms are not the same. The prognosis and the goals of both differ from each other. Let’s look closer into these terms and discuss similarities and differences.
Hospice Care Definition VS Palliative Care Definition
While the objective of both hospice and palliative care is to relieve pain and control symptoms, their definitions are not the same. According to the definition of hospice care, it is compassionate comfort care for terminally ill patients with six months or less remaining life estimated by the patients’ physicians. In other words, hospice has no curative intent, given that the patients have reached the point where they choose not to pursue the curative treatment as it has more side effects than benefits or there are no other curative options left. On the other hand, palliative care is compassionate comfort care that can be pursued during the medical treatment and follow-up, as well as the end of life. Hence, palliative care doesn’t require a patient to have a serious terminal illness with six or fewer months of remaining life.
Hospice VS Palliative Care Strategies
Hospice care requires that at least two physicians ascertain that patient has at most six months of life. Palliative care is easier to set up, based on the discretion of the physician and patient at any time, regardless of the stage and condition of the illness. Both hospice and palliative care is delivered by interdisciplinary teams to address the physical, spiritual, psychological, and emotional needs of the patient. Hospice and palliative care also differ in their settings. Hospice care is more inclined to provide all the comfort and warmth of home, being delivered at home or similar hospice residents, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, veterans’ facilities, hospitals, and other facilities. In the meantime, palliative care teams typically work in a hospital.
Final Note
To keep it short, we can consider hospice care as the subcategory of palliative care. Hospice is part of palliative care, but not all palliative care is hospice. In other words, all hospice palliative care, but not all palliative care is hospice. Both focus on relieving the pain of seriously ill patients, putting their wishes and the caregiver’s wishes first.
