Geriatric palliative care - Part I: Pain and symptom management

Palliative care is the interdisciplinary specialty that focuses on improving quality of life for patients with advanced illness and their families. It is offered simultaneously with all other appropriate medical care, and relieves patient and family suffering by providing expert pain and symptom management, as well as sophisticated communication regarding advance care planning, delivery of bad news, establishing goals of care, and decisions to withhold or withdraw medical treatments. The aging population, in combination with an increasingly fragmented healthcare system, makes the need for palliative care evident now more than ever. In Part I of this two-part article, the authors address the core palliative care skills of pain and symptom management. In Part II (to be published in an upcoming issue of Clinical Geriatrics), the authors will address communication skills.