Palliative care, with its focus on compassionate care, symptom relief, and psychosocial support, is essential for patients with serious or life-limiting illnesses. Yet, professional pride often creates a barrier, delaying timely referrals to palliative care and depriving patients of the holistic support they need.
This issue is particularly prevalent in healthcare systems that prioritize curative medicine, where palliative care is wrongly perceived as a sign of failure or a last resort.
How Professional Pride Delays Compassionate Care
1.Perception of Failure:
For many physicians, transitioning a patient to palliative care feels like conceding defeat. This misconception leads to prolonged aggressive treatments, often at the expense of the patient’s quality of life.
- Symptom Relief Deferred:
Delays in involving palliative care teams mean patients often endure unnecessary pain and suffering. Effective symptom management—such as pain relief, breathlessness control, and addressing nausea—could begin much earlier if referrals were made in a timely manner.
- Psychosocial Support Overlooked:
Beyond physical symptoms, patients and families face emotional, social, and spiritual distress. Palliative care provides essential psychosocial support, but delays caused by professional pride often leave these needs unmet until the very end.
- Missed Opportunities for Compassionate Care:
Early integration of palliative care ensures dignity and comfort, even alongside curative treatments. However, hesitation to involve palliative teams often results in missed opportunities to address the patient’s holistic well-being.
Breaking the Cycle of Delay
To overcome this reluctance, healthcare systems and providers must prioritize a cultural shift:
- Reframe the Narrative:
Palliative care should be viewed as a form of active and compassionate care, not as giving up. It complements curative efforts by focusing on quality of life and patient-centered goals.
- Emphasize Timely Referrals:
Introducing palliative care early in the disease trajectory allows for effective symptom control and emotional support, improving outcomes for both patients and families.
- Educate Healthcare Providers:
Comprehensive training can dispel myths about palliative care and empower physicians to make patient-centered decisions, free from the constraints of professional pride.
- Collaborate as a Team:
Encouraging open communication and collaboration between curative and palliative teams can reduce hesitancy and ensure patients receive the care they need without delays.
Delays in palliative care caused by professional pride can result in unnecessary suffering, both physical and emotional. Compassionate care, symptom relief, and psychosocial support should not be deferred when they can improve a patient’s quality of life.
By overcoming these barriers, healthcare providers can ensure that every patient receives timely, holistic care that respects their dignity and prioritizes their well-being—when they need it the most“
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Dr. N M Mujeeb Rahman is the General Secretary of the Palliative Care Society, Valanchery, Malappuram, Kerala. A former Professor of General Surgery, he now works as a voluntary palliative care physician for three neighborhood clinics. He has completed basic training and a fellowship in palliative care from the Institute of Palliative Medicine, Kozhikode, and is committed to community-driven palliative care initiatives.”
Excellent article. Profession pride often masks itself as professional confidence often creating stigma to palliative care from families. Serious attention should be paid in undergraduate studies leading to graduate leaving medical school with good palliative care insight.
Excellent article to encourage multi-disciplinary approach to care and also brings out the importance of palliative care.
This is a whole truth.