Palliative Care Clinic
Palliative Care Clinic
If you or a loved one are trying to manage a serious illness, Providence Medical Group Palliative Care offers care that provides unique support to patients and their families in their time of need. Our goal is to assist patients through treatment with comfort and empathy.
Our multidisciplinary palliative care team specializes in helping patients successfully manage symptoms—such as pain or shortness of breath—while also helping you better understand your condition and choices for medical care. We focus on what’s important to you and your family, from helping improve tolerance for treatment to maximizing day-to-day functioning.
Our interprofessional team follows the Providence promise – Know Me, Care for Me, Ease my Way – while exemplifying our core values of compassion, dignity, justice, excellence and integrity.
Know Me - We work with the patient and their family to identify goals and to meet their care requests.
Care for Me - We honor the unique goals and needs of each patient and their family. We know that a life-limiting illness affects everyone in the family, so we are here for each family member.
Ease my Way - We offer practical support and guidance for everyday life, as well as ongoing emotional and spiritual support for patients and their loved ones. We understand that sometimes what a patient needs most is simply a gentle touch or a friendly ear, and we are always here to provide it.
Palliative care specialists improve quality of life for the patients whose needs are most complex. Working in partnership with the primary physician, the palliative care team provides:
- Expert management of complex physical and emotional symptoms, including complex pain, depression, anxiety, fatigue, shortness of breath, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite, and difficulty sleeping
- Time to devote to intensive family meetings and patient/family counseling
- Skilled communication about what to expect in the future in order to ensure that care is matched to the goals and priorities of the patient and the family
- Coordination and communication of care plans among all providers and across all settings
Numerous studies show that palliative care significantly improves patient quality of life and lowers symptom burden. Apart from being the right thing to do for patients, this improved quality of life also means that an encounter with the health care system is less stressful and traumatic for families.
The Providence Medical Group palliative care team includes a range of professionals with special education and training in working with patients and families/loved ones facing serious illness:
- Advanced practice nurses certified in palliative care
- Doctors specialty board certified in palliative medicine, with primary certifications in internal medicine, family medicine or pediatrics
- Licensed clinical social workers
- Nurses
- Palliative Care Fellows- doctors and advanced practice nurses in a one-year training with our team to become certified in palliative care
Learn more about our caregivers
Here’s some information to help you prepare for your first consultation appointment.
- Bring a list of symptoms you’re experiencing. Note specifically what makes the symptoms better or worse and whether they affect your ability to go about your daily activities.
- Bring a list of medications and supplements you use.
- Consider bringing a family member or friend with you.
- Bring any advance directives and living wills you have completed
Palliative care specialists will initially focus on what is most important or distressing to you. Once your pressing concerns are addressed, then other guidance, recommendations, or suggestions specific to your circumstances will be provided.
Your palliative care team will talk with you about your symptoms, current treatments, and how this illness is affecting you and your family. You and your palliative care team then make a plan to prevent and ease suffering to improve your daily life. This plan will be carried out in coordination with your primary care team in a way that works well with any other treatments that you are receiving
Having a seriously ill child is one of the most difficult things anyone can face. As the parent and caregiver, we believe you know what is best for your child but making ongoing decisions and providing care that’s compassionate and supportive can be emotionally and physically overwhelming. Sometimes it’s hard to do it all alone. With board certified pediatricians, palliative care offers an extra layer of support to your family and medical team to help you ensure the highest quality of life for your child.
From the moment your child is diagnosed through the course of the illness, palliative care focuses on enhancing quality of life and minimizing pain, while providing spiritual and emotional support to your child and other family members.
For some mother’s and families, medical tests before their baby’s delivery can reveal worrisome news. Providence Medical Group palliative care supports families as they explore with their specialty healthcare team treatment options for their baby. Families are supported to make a plan of care for their baby based upon their goals.
Palliative care (pronounced pal-lee-uh-tiv) is specialized medical care for people living with serious illness. As partners with your established healthcare team, Palliative care specialists focus on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of the illness. The goal of palliative care is improving you and your family’s quality of life.
Palliative care is beneficial to people of any age who have a serious illness. It can help both adults and children living with illnesses such as:
- Cancer
- Blood and bone marrow disorders requiring stem cell transplant
- Heart disease
- Cystic fibrosis
- Dementia
- End-stage liver disease
- Kidney failure
- Lung disease
- Parkinson's disease
- Stroke
- Genetic disorders
Palliative care is focused on your needs, not your diagnosis.
Palliative care is provided by a specialty-trained team of doctors, advance practice registered nurses, social workers, and others who work together with your other healthcare team members as an extra layer of support. Palliative care specialists provide expert management of complex physical and emotional symptoms, including complex pain, depression, anxiety, fatigue, shortness of breath, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite, and difficulty sleeping.
Palliative care occurs where you need it most, and can be provided in a variety of settings including the hospital, outpatient clinic, and at home.
Palliative care can occur at the same time as all other treatments, including curative treatment, for your illness. There’s absolutely no reason to wait. In fact, some studies have shown that palliative care may extend life. Pain and other symptoms affect your quality of life, and stress can have a big impact on you and your family.
Palliative care specialists use time and skilled communication to better understand your concerns and goals.
Palliative care specialists have time to devote to intensive family meetings and counseling for you and your family. Taking this time allows palliative care specialists to engage in skilled communication with you about what to expect in the future ensuring that the care matches you and your family’s goals and priorities.
Palliative care supports coordinating and communicating care plans among all providers and across all settings.
Most insurance plans, including Medicare and Medicaid, cover palliative care. It is handled like other medical services, such as oncology.
Numerous studies have shown that palliative care improves quality of life, decreases symptom burden, and improves satisfaction with care. Providence St. Joseph believes it is the best care possible for all patients living with serious illness. An improved quality of life means that a encounters with the health care system are likely less stressful and traumatic for families.
Both programs aim to support comfort and quality of life when living with a serious illness. Hospice is focused on the last weeks to months of life and this team comes to patient’s home/residence to provides a great amount of help directly into one’s home (nurses, aides, doctors, chaplains and volunteers) and maybe the sole focus of care when no longer receiving curative treatments.
Palliative care can be provided at any time during a serious illness and this team can support people in the hospital or facility, or in their home through our clinic services. You can receive palliative care while also receiving life-prolonging or curative treatments.
Learn more about Providence Hospice Alaska
You may already have been referred to the palliative care team, but if not, you can ask your oncologist for a referral. We partner with your oncologist and health care team.
Your financial gifts help support our work and benefit the patients and families we serve. All contributions are welcome. A donation may be a special way to pay tribute to the memory of a loved one or to honor someone living.
You may make your gift online, or if you’d prefer, send a check by mail. Please make your check payable to Providence Alaska Foundation and include a short note or write on the memo line that you would like your gift designated to Providence Medical Group Palliative Care. Please mail your gift to:
Providence Alaska Foundation
PO Box 196604
Anchorage, AK 99519