What to know about palliative care in older adults

Palliative care can support someone with cancer or another serious illness at any stage. It may address pain, breathlessness, nausea, constipation, fatigue, anxiety, sleep problems, or distress. A team may include doctors, nurses, social workers, counsellors, pharmacists, and spiritual-care professionals. Care is shaped around the older adult's values, abilities, culture, and preferred place of care. It can be provided with treatments intended to control illness and is distinct from care limited to the final days of life.

Ask the treating clinician for a palliative-care referral and include the older adult in decisions as far as they wish and are able. Bring a list of medicines, symptoms, daily challenges, and personal priorities. Discuss who should be contacted after hours, how medicines will be managed, mobility and home equipment, nutrition, caregiver relief, and advance care preferences. Revisit the plan when symptoms or goals change.

Seek urgent help for severe breathing difficulty, new confusion, uncontrolled pain, repeated vomiting, sudden weakness, a fall with injury, inability to take essential medicines, or a rapid change in responsiveness. Contact the care team promptly when symptoms worsen or a caregiver can no longer manage safely at home.

Ask what symptoms the team can treat, who will coordinate visits, and how palliative care fits with current treatment. Ask about medicine side effects, home nursing, emergency contacts, decision-making support, caregiver respite, advance care planning, and what changes should trigger a call.