Palliative care focuses on relief of symptoms and quality in patients with serious illness.
The goal of palliative care is to help patients optimize quality of life and get relief from the pain, symptoms and side effects of a serious health condition. Palliative care can also help clarify overall goals of your medical care and aid in advance care planning. ECU Health Medical Center in Greenville offers palliative care for patients undergoing treatments for illness, injury or disease.
Palliative care can occur in conjunction with curative care — treatment to cure disease. Unlike hospice, which is appropriate only in life-limiting circumstances, palliative care is available at any time during the patient’s health condition, from diagnosis and through curative treatments. Your care team will always include your primary care doctor. Other specialists and palliative care providers will be added to your team as you need them. We will ensure you understand your condition and options, and we will work closely to understand your wishes. ECU Health’s primary goal is to lessen your pain — physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Why ECU Health Palliative Care?
While your doctors are working with you on treatment and recovery, we aim to minimize discomfort and alleviate distressing symptoms.
We want to know what’s important to you. If you have a living will or other advance directives, we’ll make sure they are scanned into your health record. If you need to prepare these documents, we’ll help with that too.
We help to ensure that your care matches up with your priorities and values. If needed, we can help guide you and your family through end-of-life care and point you to the important resources available during those difficult times.
Browse our health library for all of your palliative care research needs.