Palliative care

It is hoped that the reader has an appreciation for what care near the end of life could be, and that it should be viewed as a shift in focus to optimize quality of life and minimize symptoms rather than attempting to cure a disease. Symptom management and maximizing function require excellent technical and interpersonal skills and is required by all physicians in all specialties to provide "comfort always." A letter from a medical intensive care specialist illustrates this and other points20: When it is not possible to save a life, I have learned and have begun to teach how to 'save a death,' as I have come to call it- to help a patient preserve comfort and dignity despite overwhelming illness and to help a family understand the inevitability of the death, how the death might at this time be appropriate, and how to move forward in the process of bereavement. Saving deaths, I have to realize, is as important and rewarding as saving lives. This is the central and enduring message in the letters in my file.

Duke Scholars

Author Anthony Nicholas Galanos Medicine, Geriatrics