Palliative Matters

As a former medical member of Palliative Care & now as a patient, I can’t thank you enough for your emphasis on proper life and pain management. One thing I believe would benefit physicians and nurses and patients alike is to not group Palliative Care and Hospice together. Too many people are already confused about what Palliative Care encompasses. They do not understand that all hospice may be Palliative Care but not all Palliative Care is Hospice. Palliative Care is of great benefit to MS Patients but we aren’t necessarily appropriate for & likely won’t be for years, hospice if we choose Palliative Care early on in our process. I would love to see a non hospice palliative care podcast where more than death & dying (though I deeply appreciate that too) and more than primarily cancer is talked about. It took me two years to convince my PCP that not only was I an appropriate patient for Palliative Care, but that I needed it. The confusion primarily stems around hospice almost always being grouped in with Palliative Care. We need better physicians & patients so that patients have better opportunity to utilize this valuable humane means of caring for the patient and stop using language that indicates limitation to just hospice and cancer. Maybe you can do some helpful informing through your podcast. I do appreciate the podcast and it is one of my favorite on the subject. Keep up the valuable work. Thank you.

100% recommend to any healthcare provider!!

I do enjoy the podcast as a provider fairly new to palliative, however, I am finding it increasingly frustrating to hear such a MD centric podcast that nearly always assumes all physicians are men. It would go a long way towards increasing inclusiveness to refer to “medical providers” or “palliative providers” rather than “physicians” or “doctors”. And to use more gender neutral terms when referring to those providers. Nearly always when they talk about a physician in the abstract they refer to that physician as a man. One of the reasons I transitioned to palliative medicine was the inclusive and team based culture. This podcast often runs in the face of that effort.