This week, Bobbi Conner talks with Dr. Conrad Williams about palliative care for children and adults. Dr. Williams is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and the Medical Director of the Palliative Care Program at MUSC Health.
TRANSCRIPT:
Conner: I'm Bobbi Conner for South Carolina Public Radio with Health Focus here at the radio studio for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Palliative care is an extra layer of support for adults and children living with a serious or chronic illness. Doctor Conrad Williams is here to talk about the details. Doctor Williams is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and the Medical Director of the Palliative Care Program at MUSC Health. Doctor Williams, many people are unsure what palliative care means and sometimes even confuse palliative care with hospice care. So first tell us about palliative care.
Dr. Williams: Sure. Palliative care is a really beautiful, medical specialty that is focused on helping people with serious illness and their loved ones, live as well as possible for as long as possible. So, the focus really is on improving a person's quality of life at the time that they're diagnosed with a serious illness.
Conner: And who can really receive palliative care.
Dr. Williams: All ages are eligible to receive palliative care services. It is focused on people who are diagnosed with a serious illness. So, for example, it could be a child with a congenital heart defect. So born with a heart problem that is life threatening. It could be an adult with advanced dementia, advanced cancer. And so, anybody diagnosed with a serious illness that is life threatening but still may be cured, or they still may recover from.
Conner: And tell us more about the different types of care. I mean, are we talking about emotional care? Are we talking about physical care, medical care, spiritual care?
Dr. Williams: When an individual is faced with a serious illness, they are impacted or face suffering in a lot of different ways. So, they could face physical suffering, emotional suffering, spiritual suffering, a lot of different challenges that come along with having a serious illness. And those challenges are often faced by their loved one as well. A palliative care team is an interdisciplinary team, so the team that provides that care consists of clinicians, consists of social workers. It consists of chaplains. It consists of grief and bereavement coordinators as well. And so that's the type of support that these patients and families will get from the entire team. And it's really, the type of support is driven by what those patients need. So, they might need help with management of pain and other symptoms. So maybe that's where the clinicians come into play. Many patients, when they're facing a serious illness, have a lot of spiritual existential distress. So that's where chaplains can really play a key role in that. There's a lot of anticipatory grieving that comes along with having a serious illness. And so, we have a number of different specialists, like social workers, our grief and bereavement coordinator, that can help those patients and their loved ones through the emotional experiences that they're facing with their serious illness.
Conner: How does an individual who might benefit from palliative care really get started initiating this type of care?
Dr. Williams: Sure. Just as with any medical specialty, It can commonly be received through a referral by your primary care physician or another specialist that might be helping to care for you. I always encourage patients to advocate and ask for a palliative care referral themselves, and then they can also self-refer as well. So there are a number of palliative care programs that take self referrals.
Conner: And tell us about the ideal timing for someone to be introduced to palliative care.
Dr. Williams: Yeah. So ideally, palliative care can be started around the time of a diagnosis of a serious illness, because the positive impacts can really start from the very beginning at diagnosis. And they can be carried through throughout the entire course of somebody's serious illness, whether their condition improves or not.
Conner: Doctor Williams, thanks for talking with us about palliative care.
Dr. Williams: You're welcome.
Conner: From the radio studio for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, I'm Bobbi Conner for South Carolina Public Radio.
Health Focus transcripts are intended to accurately represent the original audio version of the program; however, some discrepancies or inaccuracies may exist. The audio format serves as the official record of Health Focus programming.
