Palliative Care in South East Ontario

Palliative Care is designed to provide compassionate care to both patients with a life-threatening illness and their families in their own homes, in the hospital, or in other care facilities.

In South East Ontario, Palliative Care Services are provided by the Queen’s (University) Palliative Care Medicine Program (QPCMP), the Cancer Centre of Southeastern Ontario's Palliative Medicine and Supportive Care Program and various other medical and community support service providers.

These organizations address issues of pain and symptom management, psychosocial distress, and end-of-life care for palliative care patients and their families.

What is Palliative Care?

The World Health Organization defines Palliative Care as follows:

"Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.

Palliative care:

• provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms;
• affirms life and regards dying as a normal process;
• intends neither to hasten or postpone death;
• integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care;
• offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death;
• offers a support system to help the family cope during the patients illness and in their own bereavement;
• uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counselling, if indicated;
• will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness;
• is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications."

Palliative Care Services in South East Ontario

There are several ways to get Palliative Care Services for people living in South East Ontario. Please click one of the following categories to find out more information: