Offering a Continuum of
Care Throughout Advanced Illness

 

P.O. Box 14549
Savannah, Ga 31416		 (T) 912-354-8014
(F) 912-354-4670

The Steward Center for Palliative Care, in collaboration with area hospitals, offers comprehensive interdisciplinary care for patients and families dealing with life-limiting illnesses. Palliative care seeks to alleviate suffering and promote a good quality of life for the patient.

What is it? Palliative care is a medical specialty that supports the primary physician’s care of patients with serious and life-threatening illness.

  • Palliative care specialists treat complex pain and symptoms, handle intensive patient-family communication, and manage after-hours needs and questions.
  • Palliative care specialists support the primary physicians’ plan of care by making the patient as comfortable as possible at all stages of illness, simultaneously with curative or life-prolonging care.

What it is not. Palliative care is NOT in place of curative care.

  • Patients benefit from palliative care before, during and after beneficial, curative or life-prolonging care.
  • Palliative care is NOT the same as hospice. Palliative care is offered at any stage of any illnesses, while hospice care is appropriate for people with terminal illness at the last stages of life who are ready to discontinue life-prolonging or curative therapies.

How can palliative care help patients and their families?

  • It makes patients feel better throughout illness by:
    • Vigorously treating pain and symptoms, such as nausea, fatigue, depression and anxiety
    • Keeping patients as comfortable and active as possible while fighting an illness so as to remain independent and live fully
    • Benefiting patients at all stages of illness, while receiving curative treatment or any other medical care
  •  It supports patients and families to navigate the medical system by:
  • Assisting patients and families in making decisions about care and treatments — then ensuring that care is received
  • Providing answers, assistance and emotional support to patients and families making difficult medical decisions
  • Identifying services to support patients after leaving the hospital

Collaborative effort with area hospitals. Palliative care seeks to alleviate suffering and promote a good quality of life for patient. The palliative Care team consists of palliative-trained physicians, nurses, social workers and chaplains, whose goals are management of pain and other distressing phyical symptoms, as well as important psychosocial and spiritual sources of distress that complicate the care of life-threatening illness. The Palliative Care team also can offer assistance with discussion of advanced directives, treatment goals and assessment for further referrals. The Palliative Care team will follow the patients in the hospital until symptoms are relieved or until the patient is discharged. Limited outpatient follow-up may be available in certain cases by special request of the attending physician.

The Steward Center for Palliative Care helps physicians, patients and family members identify realistic short- and long-term goals so that treatment plans focus not only on the immediate medical issues, but also consider other important concerns of the patient and family.

For more information or to initiate a palliative care consult contact The Steward Center for Palliative Care
at 354-8014.

Consult palliative care

Appropriate Palliative Care Referrals

  • Patient and family needs help with complex decision-making and determination of goals of care
  • Unacceptable level of pain or other  symptom distress more than 48 hours after hospitalization
  • Uncontrolled psychosocial or spiritual issues
  • Frequent visits to emergency department for the same diagnosis
  • Frequent hospital admissions for the same diagnosis in the previous few  months
  • Prolonged length of stay in the hospital (7-14 days) without evidence of  improvement
  • Prolonged stay in ICU setting without evidence of improvement
  • In an ICU setting with documented poor prognosis
  • Assistance needed to determine hospice eligibility