Palliative Care Services
The Palliative Care Services at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center provides a special kind of health care for individuals and families who are living with a life-threatening illness. In keeping with the hospital's mission to improve the health of our community, the program embraces the patient and family as a unit and recognizes cultural, ethnic and spiritual differences.
Palliative Care uses an interdisciplinary treatment approach, and our team at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center works with each discipline involved with the patient and family to provide holistic, compassionate care. The aim is to relieve physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual suffering during any state of an illness.
What is Palliative Care?
Palliative Care refers to the specialized approach toward improving the quality of life for patients with serious illness, as well as addressing the concerns of their families. The goal of palliative care is to provide to provide symptomatic and emotional support to patients suffering from a potentially life threatening illness by ensuring their comfort and dignity.
Our approach is to focus on the person, not just a specific disease, by offering comprehensive management of physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and existential symptoms for the patient and family during any state of a serious illness while improving the quality of life.
Palliative Care differs from hospice care in that the patient can continue to receive appropriate, active, curative treatment and need not have a life expectancy of six months or less. The Palliative Care team provides skilled, compassionate care while the patient is hospitalized, and ensures the best discharge plan available to meet the needs of this unique patient and his or her family.
The Palliative Care Team
The Palliative Care Team consists of an 11 member interdisciplinary group including nursing, pharmacy, spiritual care, case management, social work, pain management, and physician leadership. The team's aim is to relieve suffering and improve quality of life during any state of a life-threatening illness, from diagnosis through the end of life and bereavement.
To learn more about Palliative Care Services at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, please call 480.728.7533.
