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Irish Hospice Foundation
Toolkit for Compassionate End-of-Life Care
e palliative approach focuses on the prevention and relief of suffering by means of assessing and treating pain and other physical, psychologial or spiritual problems. e aim of palliative care is to enhance quality of life and wherever possible to positively influence the needs of illness. Many people mistakenly believe that you can only receive palliative care when other treatments are no longer possible. Palliative care can be provided to people of any age and at any stage of their illness. e Adult Palliative Care Services: Model of Care for Ireland ( e National Clinical Programme for Palliative Care, 2019) sets out how the provision of palliative care is structured in three levels:
Level One: Palliative care approach:
• Palliative care principles should be practiced by all healthcare professionals. e palliative care approach should be a core skill of every clinician at hospital and community level. Many patients with a progressive and advanced disease will have their care needs met comprehensively and satisfactorily without referral to specialist palliative care units or personnel.
Level Two: General palliative care:
• At an intermediate level, a proportion of patients and families will benefit from the expertise of healthcare professionals who, although not engaged full time in palliative care, have had some additional training and experience in palliative care, perhaps to diploma level. Such intermediate level expertise may be available in hospital or community settings.
Level Three: Specialist palliative care:
• Specialist palliative care services are those services whose core activity is focused to the provision of palliative care. ese services are involved in the care of patients with more complex and challenging care needs, and consequently, require a greater degree of training, staff and other resources. Specialist palliative care services, because of the nature of the needs they are designed to meet, are analogous to secondary or tertiary healthcare services.
is toolkit aims to support healthcare staff to provide a Level 1 - Palliative care approach .
Palliative Care Booklet “Palliative Care: What is it and who is it for” by Irish Hospice Foundation is a useful resource for you, your patients and the people close to them, answering frequently asked questions on palliative care. Scan the QR code to download a copy.
Palliative Care What is it and who is it for?
Dying in Ireland 1
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