Radius Care Provide Palliative Care

No matter who we are, no matter what our background, we all eventually face death and dying. Palliative and end of life care provides people with humane and dignified support and services as they face a life limiting condition. This care is essential. Palliative care at Radius Care aims to optimise an individual’s quality of life until death by addressing the person’s physical, psychosocial, spiritual and cultural needs, and support the individual’s family, whānau and other caregivers where needed into bereavement.

 

An Advance Care Plan provides the opportunity for patients, their family, and health care providers to enter into the territory of “end-of-life”. Importantly, it opens up conversations. In many cases it is liberating – from denial of the reality that a patient is experiencing and from fear of what might lie ahead. The New Zealand Advance Care Planning (ACP) Co-operative has been established through the Ministry of Health, and excellent guidelines on the principles and application of ACP have just been published.

Palliative care is a crucial part of our health care system, providing care and support for people with life-limiting illnesses and their families, and it is expected that the need for Palliative Care will grow, as the population gets older so it is important that New Zealanders understand what it is and how it can benefit patients and their families and whanau.

Palliative care is care for people of all ages with a life limiting illness. It aims to optimise an individual’s quality of life until death by addressing the person’s physical, psychological, spiritual and cultural needs and supporting the individual’s family, whanau and other carers where needed through the illness and after the death.

Palliative care is not just for people with cancer. It is also provided to people with other illnesses including heart failure, liver failure, renal failure and is not just delivered by hospices. It is provided by GPs, District Nurses, in residential aged care facilities and in hospitals.

New research shows that when people with advanced cancer receive palliative care alongside cancer therapies they have a better quality of life and live longer. (New England Journal of Medicine 2010)

The team at Radius Care have decades of experience in helping you choose the right Radius Care facility for your loved one, so for more information on respite care, rest homes Tauranga and aged care NZ please go to http://www.radiuscare.co.nz .