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It Aims to Improve Quality of Life

Lynne Lamberg

JAMA. 2002;288:943-944.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Philadelphia—After her best friend died, a woman in her 80s who lived in a nursing home developed anxiety and shortness of breath. She was admitted to a hospital where physicians discovered she had lung cancer. The woman, a long-time smoker, chose not to have aggressive care, and returned to the nursing home.

The staff gave her a bible that had belonged to her friend, which comforted her. The nursing home social worker and nurses spent more time with her. She had no family, and chose not to see a member of the clergy.

Palliative care, sometimes called comfort care, goes beyond pain relief to embrace emotional, social, and spiritual needs of seriously ill patients, said geriatric psychiatrist Judith Crossett, MD, PhD, who treated the woman just described at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City. Palliative care is appropriate, she added, whenever an illness . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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