The potential for creative cross-over, stimulating overlap of expertise, and ground-breaking collaboration between palliative care and anesthesiology within the Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) environment is enormous.
Palliative care has been defined as patient- and family-centered care that attempts to optimize quality of life while minimizing the burden of disease. Palliative care is provided by a team of interdisciplinary specialists who address the physical, emotional, psychosocial and spiritual domains that make up a whole person. Unlike hospice care, palliative care is not constrained to an expected prognosis, so patients may receive palliative care at any stage in the course of their serious illness and they may receive curative treatment alongside palliative treatment. For patients with serious illness, palliative care provides better quality care at a lower cost.1
The PSH has been defined as “a patient-centered and physician-led multidisciplinary and team-based system of coordinated care that guides the patient through the...
