Whether you or a loved one is confronting the stress and strain of serious illness or dealing with the ongoing symptoms or side effects from chronic illness, there’s always room for a bit more comfort and care to accompany your treatment. The medical system is somewhat notorious for ignoring or downplaying some of the most challenging aspects of illness, which may have little to do with your actual medical treatment. You may be experiencing physical pain or discomfort, emotional turmoil, spiritual questioning, or even psychological trauma from your disease or treatment, yet have those consequential aspects of your illness largely ignored by medical providers. That’s where palliative care comes in, if you know what it is and can access it. Since November is Palliative Care Month, we thought we’d review some of the recent research on palliative care and use this opportunity to remind you about the important relief and comfort you can receive by including palliative care as part of your illness experience.

First, what do we mean by palliative care? Palliative care is a specialized, interdisciplinary approach to care that aims to provide symptom and stress relief from illness or treatment. It is intended to support both patients and their families, and while it is often suggested in the presence of serious, even life-threatening illness, in fact, palliative care can play an important role in the face of such chronic conditions as diabetes or kidney dialysis. The team that delivers palliative care is often called in as a consulting team, and can include such professionals as physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, and pharmacists. It should be an option for any illness that lowers your quality of life or ability to perform everyday tasks. While hospice care is intended to provide the same attention to symptom relief and comfort for patients and families at life’s end, when patients are no longer receiving treatment intended to control or cure their disease, palliative care, in contrast, can be delivered alongside curative or disease management efforts, and its use in no way signifies that you are facing a life-ending illness. In an ideal situation, palliative care would be integral to the diagnosis and treatment of a range of chronic and serious conditions. However, as research shows and patients experience, it is still largely absent in clinical settings unless patients and families know to request it.

Let’s look at some of the research. First, a recent study conducted by the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging underscores how many of us lack an understanding of what palliative care is. According to this survey, of people aged 50 and older, 36% said they know something about palliative care, while 64% said they know little or not much at all. More respondents said they knew what hospice was, yet ⅓ of those polled also said they knew little or not much at all about hospice. However, once the concept of palliative care was explained, 84% of respondents said they would be interested in receiving palliative care if they had a serious illness. Clearly, if you’re in the know (which many people are not), involving palliative care in the treatment of your illness can be a positive step in your care experience. Even for patients facing serious, possibly life-threatening illnesses, it appears there’s underuse of palliative care for symptom and stress relief. A study published earlier this year in JAMA Health Forum found that only 25% of Medicare patients with advanced cancer received palliative care to address their symptoms, and even those who did receive it often did so late in the trajectory of their disease. As the reports on this study concluded, “Even though clinicians and professional healthcare organizations have recommended early integration of supportive and palliative care for all patients with advanced cancers, it remains underused.” A later study from 2025 came to similar conclusions. This study, published in JAMA Network Open, analyzed data from 1.5 million Medicare fee-for-service patients who died between 2018 and 2023, with an examination of the provision of palliative care outside of hospice settings. The researchers found that certain patient groups, including older seniors, those with low incomes, and those who live outside of metropolitan areas, were significantly less likely to receive palliative care. For more on this study, read here.

In summary, palliative care has much to offer patients and families, whether it’s during the treatment and management of a chronic condition or whether it is accessed during a more serious illness which has not yet reached a terminal phase. The goal is to integrate a palliative approach to care early on, to limit or even eliminate the burdensome and often painful symptoms and side effects that make the experience of being ill that much worse. However, it appears that many in the medical community are unaware of its availability, uneducated about its value, or even unwilling to provide treatment to the patient alongside a palliative care team. So, it may become incumbent upon patients and their families to actively request the involvement of palliative care. While not every clinical setting has such a resource, they are increasingly common- either directly as part of the health care setting or available as an outside consulting team. For more on the availability of palliative care and how to access it, assert yourself and look here and here.