Palliative Care
Palliative Care - Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
| Palliative care is an approach to your care which aims to improve your quality of life by providing the best possible symptom control and support for you and your carers. It aims to minimise suffering associated with cancer and other serious illnesses. It is provided by both specialist palliative care teams working with other health care providers here at Peter MacCallum and also by other specialist teams working in the community. |
| What does palliative care mean for me? >> |
| When you are an inpatient >> |
| When you are an outpatient >> |
| Research >> |
| Helpful hints >> |
| Staff >> |
| Contact us >> |
| Useful links >> |
| What does palliative care mean for me? |
| Some people will require the support of a palliative care service to assist in the management of complex symptoms during treatment. For others, despite using the best treatments available, the cancer will continue to return. The news that cancer cannot be cured can bring about a wide range of emotions including shock, fear, anger and sadness. Palliative care teams are able to support people through these emotions, ensuring that they maintain control and enabling cancer patients to live life according to their own choices and full potential. Most people experience concern at how their family may react to the news that their disease is incurable. Palliative Care offers a support system to help partners and other family members cope with this difficult situation. The Pain & Palliative Care Team works closely alongside your treating Oncology or Haematology team and other teams you may be seeing at Peter Mac: including Social Work, Pastoral Care, Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy and Dietetics. We aim to provide pain and symptom control and practical and emotional support regardless of the stage of your cancer or when you were diagnosed. The palliative care team play an important role in the care of those who are approaching the end of their lives. Our goals are to help improve quality of life for you and your family/carers; to help you to be clear about the overall aims of care and to plan for your future care. This may involve seeing you while you are an inpatient on the ward or as an outpatient. Where necessary, we can help to organise Community Palliative Care to support you and your family at home, and assist in arranging admissions for inpatient palliative care if required. |
When you are an inpatient |
| We provide a ‘consultative service’. That is, we work with your primary treating team to assist in the management of your care, including pain and symptom control, whilst you are on the ward. You may be seen 2 or 3 times a week (or more frequently if necessary) by a member of our team. We may also be involved in discussing your preferences for care with you and your family and organising care for when you leave hospital. |
When you are an outpatient |
| The Pain and Palliative Care clinics are held on Monday and Thursday afternoons. A team of doctors, nurses and a pharmacist attend these clinics. If you are coming to Peter Mac for other appointments outside of these times, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy or other outpatient appointments, we will try our best to see you then. Ask your nurse coordinator or clinic staff to call us to review you when you attend these other appointments. This avoids repeated hospital visits for you. We work closely with your treating team, your GP and your Community Nurses to improve your care. We will advise them of any changes that we make to your medications so that they can help to monitor how well these medications are working for you and make changes if necessary. We ask that you continue to see your GP. This keeps your GP up-to-date and involved in your care as much as possible and will help to reduce the number of hospital visits you need for medications and routine reviews. Your GP can provide you with most of your prescriptions, including monthly supplies of opioid painkillers such as morphine if this is required. We will continue to supply some medications from Peter Mac that are not easily available from your local pharmacies. When you are at home, you can contact us directly for advice if necessary. We can also keep in touch with your GP and community nurses as required. |
| Research |
| Our department runs a number of clinical research trials to improve symptom management. All the trials are conducted with approval of the Hospital Ethics Committee. You may be invited to participate in a trial. Choosing not to participate in a trial does not in any way alter the relationship you have with our team or the quality of the care you will receive at Peter Mac. |
| Helpful hints |
| Keep a record of all the medications or supplements you are taking at the moment, whether they are over-the-counter, prescribed by us or any of the teams at Peter Mac or by your GP. Make a note of the doses you are taking, and the number of times a day you take these drugs. Please bring this record or the actual drugs with you to hospital outpatient appointments; or with you if you are going to be admitted as an inpatient. If you have pain or other symptoms, keeping a diary can be very informative. Keeping a record of these will give us a good idea of what your symptoms are like, how well your medications are working, what helps and what is less useful. This will help us to shape your treatment plan. |
Staff |
| The team of highly skilled staff includes: Medical Consultants, Medical Registrars, HMO, Nurse Consultants, a Research team and an Administration Assistant. |
| Contact us |
| Department of Pain and Palliative Care 6th Floor Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre St Andrews Place East Melbourne Please feel free to contact us should you have any questions or concerns. Departmental Office – Ph: 03 9656 1918 (9-5 weekdays) Fax: 03 9656 1998 Peter Mac switchboard – 03 9656 1111 and ask to be put through to the Department of Pain and Palliative Care. |
| Useful links |
| Fact sheets on cancer pain from the International Association for the Study of Pain >> |
| Palliative Care Victoria: Website >> |
| Palliative Care Australia: Website >> |
| Frequently Asked Questions >> |
| Website Link: Department of Human Services Palliative Care Search >> |
| Website Link: Palliative Care Victoria Search >> |
