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Palliative care and hospice care—while similar—are not the same. Both focus on the patient’s holistic needs and quality of life at the end of life. Hospice care focuses on managing the pain, symptoms, and stress of life-limiting illnesses in an individual whose life expectancy is six months or less (if the disease runs its natural course). Hospice enrollment requires that an individual has a terminal prognosis, and the goal of hospice is comfort, not a cure.
Palliative care, however, is not time-limited and does not replace curative treatment. This type of care works together with long-term curative and therapeutic treatments, such as chemotherapy, dialysis, and surgery. The goal is maximizing quality of life while managing pain and symptoms like pain, nausea, fatigue, shortness of breath, anxiety, and more.
