The aim of palliative care is to is to support the best quality of life possible by preventing and relieving the symptoms caused by the patient’s illness and by providing support for coping with the illness, in accordance with the patient’s needs and wishes. Palliative care centres on encountering the patient and their loved ones as individuals in a comprehensive manner. Palliative care attends to the patient’s psychological, social, existential, and spiritual or belief-based needs. A serious illness affects the lives of the patient’s loved ones as well. Providing support for loved ones is a part of comprehensive palliative care.
What is palliative care?
Palliative care relieves the patient’s symptoms and supports the quality of life of both the patient and their loved ones.
Palliative care is for all patients with a chronic, progressive illness that causes symptoms that decrease quality of life or result in needs for support. Such illnesses include advanced cancer; advanced heart, liver, or kidney failure; chronic pulmonary diseases; and progressive neurological diseases.
As the illness progresses, it’s a good idea to make an advance care plan for end-of-life care, so that the patient’s wishes and expectations for their care can be considered as comprehensively as possible.
The plan includes an assessment of the kind of palliative care needed now and in the future, and where this care can best be provided. This creates a good basis for how to organise care.
Palliative care does not preclude other types of treatment. Care focused on symptom relief and quality of life should start in the earlier stages of a chronic illness, alongside treatment of the illness itself. Care focused on symptom relief eases symptoms caused by the illness or by treatments, and support based on the patient’s needs eases the psychological and mental strain on the patient. Early palliative care is provided in situations such as alongside cancer drug treatments aimed at slowing down the progression of cancer.
Moving to palliative care takes place when the progression of the patient’s illness can no longer be slowed down with disease-specific treatments to a meaningful extent, and the illness causes symptoms that interfere with the patient’s life. At this stage, the aim of care is to relieve the patient’s symptoms, maintain quality of life, and ensure that the remainder of the patient’s life with the illness is as good and active as possible, in accordance with the patient’s wishes.
Moving to palliative care does not mean that the patient no longer receives treatment: instead, the treatment focuses on offering the best possible care for a patient with an incurable illness. This does not preclude any treatments that might still benefit the patient. A person receiving palliative care may live for several months, sometimes even a few years.
Hospice care, or end-of-life care, is the last stage of palliative care, taking place in the last weeks or days of the patient’s life.
Updated 27.3.2025