“Comprehensive care, provided by an interdisciplinary team, for patients and families, particularly where care is focused on alleviating suffering and promoting quality of life…Major concerns are pain and symptom management, information sharing and advance care planning, psychological and spiritual support, and coordination of care, including arranging for excellent services in the community.”
Billings A. What is Palliative Care? J Palliative Medicine. 1998.
Why Spirituality and Medicine?
“Doctors must develop an awareness that those persons who come to them have a variety of needs. Recognizing those needs is crucial. It is unrealistic to expect the doctor to meet and treat them all. But just as I as an internist and geriatrician can make a diagnosis of cancer-even though I do not perform surgery or administer chemotherapy, or provide radiation therapy-so all physicians should be able to get a sense of a person’s need for spiritual help and respond with respect and, if necessary, appropriate referral. Palliative medicine, with its deep roots in the hospice movement, has recognized the need to attend to spirituality in assessing the suffering of persons with life-threatening illness.”
- Sheehan, M. Spirituality and Medicine, J Palliative Medicine, 2003