Palliative care is care that improves the quality of life for people living with advanced illnesses.
As a palliative care doctor, I work within a multi-professional team, and our job – collectively – is to alleviate not only the physical symptoms that can be experienced by people with advanced illness (such as pain and breathlessness) but also the psychological, social, and spiritual concerns. Palliative care has been described as ‘radical autonomy’. It is intrinsically person-centred and focuses on what matters most to the individual.