What is palliative care?
Palliative care is providing support and care for a pet approaching the end stages of life. Palliative care looks at supporting both the pet and the family. It promotes comfort and improves quality of life of the pet during the end stage of life. Palliative care helps to manage symptoms of a condition or disease when there is not cure or the goal is no longer to cure but to manage and support the symptoms. Palliative care aims to help support the pet at home where they are most comfortable with their loved ones maximizing the time with their family. Palliative cares allows Continuous care at home to help manage the pets symptoms with the help of veterinary professionals to ensure max comfort and management at home promoting quality of life.

 

What does Palliative care look like?
Palliative care looks different depending on the pets needs, conditions, and goals and wishes of the family. It is important to work with your veterinary team to determine the best palliative care plan to meet both the pet and the family. The plan takes into consideration of the needs and the capabilities of the family. Palliative care can be medications, supplements, specialized diets, mobility harnesses or making adjustments at home. Changes at home can include specialized beds, limiting access to stairs, adding pet stairs or ramps to help pets get up and down, Non slip flooring to avoid slips, special food dishes. If you are unsure of what adjustments you can make to your home to help your pet ask your veterinarian to help you.

 

Why is Palliative care so important?
Palliative care is so important as it helps to manage symptoms when there is no treatment or treatment is not in the best interest of the pet. It allows to make a pet comfortable as the pet reaches the end stage of life where with management can have a good quality of life. This allows the pet to live as comfortably as possible until the pet passes away or humane euthanasia is in the best interest of the pet. It is important that palliative care starts early in the disease stages to ensure this allows minimal discomfort or pain as the symptoms are managed before they becomes more complicated and helps to slow the progression through management. If you are unsure when palliative care should start for your pet consult your veterinarian.

 

How can my vet help with palliative care?
Your veterinary care team can help with palliative care in multiple different ways including diagnostics, monitoring progression and changes. Assessing any new conditions to ensure all conditions are managed in the palliative care plan. They can create a plan to help maximize the comfort of both the pet and the family. This allows a plan to be created with the pet and family in mind and finding a plan that meets the needs of both. During palliative care it is important to monitor your pets quality of life and discuss any changes with your veterinary team to ensure if there are any changes they can be addressed and the plan can change in according to the needs of the pet and family. This ensures the needs and symptoms are managed appropriately. This also helps determine if palliative care is still in the best interest of the pet or if it's time to start looking at humane euthanasia. Keeping track of this is an important part of creating the most affective end of life plan for your pet.