Palliative care for caregivers

A palliative team can teach you how to record symptoms, give medicines safely, support eating and drinking, protect sleep, and notice changes worth reporting. It can also help with equipment, transport, home services, emotional strain and conversations about what the person wants from care. The patient's preferences remain central, and you can ask for information to be repeated or written down.

Caregiving may involve more than one person. Agree who will attend appointments, collect medicines, communicate updates and provide respite. Supportive care can be involved while cancer-directed treatment continues. Learn more in [Palliative Care](/treatments/supportive-and-palliative-care/palliative-care/).

Keep a simple record of pain, breathing, alertness, bowel movements, food and fluids, and medicine times. Store medicines as instructed and never change a dose without guidance. Ask the team to demonstrate equipment or care tasks, then explain the steps back in your own words. Arrange another adult to cover meals, appointments or rest when possible; exhaustion can make safe caregiving harder.

Tell clinicians about your own sleep, mood, work pressures or physical limitations. A caregiver is part of the care plan, not an invisible extra pair of hands.

Call the cancer or palliative team if symptoms are newly severe, prescribed medicine is not controlling discomfort, the person cannot keep fluids or essential medicines down, or confusion and agitation appear. Seek emergency help for severe breathing difficulty, collapse, a seizure, sudden one-sided weakness or an inability to wake the person. Use the agreed urgent number rather than waiting for the next routine visit.

What changes should I record? Which symptoms need a same-day call? Can you provide a written medicine plan? Who can help with bathing, meals or transport? How can I arrange a break from caregiving?