Palliative Care and Pain Management

Palliative care aims to support patients with life-limiting and terminal illnesses to have the best possible quality of life by expertly assessing and managing every symptom, which includes physical and psychosocial symptoms. In this chapter, the integral link between palliative care and pain and psychiatry is explored, in relation to Anxiety, Depression, Delerium, Bereavement, and Pain, including chemical coping and the wish to hasten death. Using clinical vignettes and the literature, the reader is guided as to how to assess patients with palliative care needs and how to manage the psychological and psychiatric symptoms which palliative care patients may present. The focus is largely on the cancer patient as cancer patients access palliative care services more frequently than other patients living with life-limiting illnesses; however, everything in this chapter is equally applicable to patients with other life-limiting conditions, e.g., end-stage neurological, cardiovascular, respiratory, and hepato-renal disease. Palliative care is constantly developing and supporting more and more patients and families, and the support of the psychological as well as the physical is as important now as it always has been.