Is palliative care whether in the cancer treatment context or otherwise considered a specialty or subspecialty?
You don’t have to complete a fellowship to practice palliative care although it is becoming more popular to do so.It's a subspecialty that you practice after completing a fellowship (which requires you to have completed a residency program first). You can get into a palliative care fellowship from multiple specialties, including anesthesia, EM, FM, IM, OBGYN, peds, PM&R, psych, neuro, radiology, and surgery. Here's more info: http://aahpm.org/uploads/AAHPM16_Medical_Student_BroWEB.pdf
I have a basic follow up question.
Apart from cancer patients, what other kinds of patients do palliative care specialists tend to see the most?
To all who have responded thus far, thank you!
I have a basic follow up question.
Apart from cancer patients, what other kinds of patients do palliative care specialists tend to see the most?
In addition to what's been said above, palliative care is not just for people who are dying. This is a super common misconception. Any patient with a severe or chronic illness that results in diminished quality of life can access and benefit from palliative care, not just those who are terminal. Palliative care can be adding comfort care measures to aggressive treatment that is aimed at prolonging life, or it can be used alone in place of aggressive treatment (i.e. hospice care). During my rotations I had one patient who had cancer with a decent prognosis but a difficult treatment course - palliative care helped her with pain management and diet and that sort of thing. They also did similar stuff for a patient I had with autoimmune disease - she would probably live a long time and end up dying from something else, but they just helped manage her symptoms to maintain her quality of life.
All hospice patients are palliative care patients. Not all palliative care patients are hospice patients.So hospice patient populations are typically under palliative care or not?