Özet:

Palliative care (PC) is defined as the approach that improves quality of lives of patients and their families who face up with the problems accompanied with life-threatening conditions. Provided usually in an inpatient setting, PC services are considered as an appropriate caregiving model for patients with critical illnesses. As the need for such services increases, many healthcare systems has been developing novel programs that integrate PC to their healthcare services in-hospital, outside the hospital, and home-based settings. Home-based PC is the care approach that provides meeting of physical, psychological, and moral needs of the patients with chronic and disabling health problems such as advanced cardiac, renal, respiratory, malignant, and neurological conditions in homebased setting. It is provided by a multidisciplinary team that has training in PC and that consists of physicians, nurses, public health professionals, and volunteers in line with PC programs of hospitals. Patients in need of PC have higher mortality and length of stay at intensive care units (ICU) with increased costs; in fact, they often live their terminal days in ICU. Even though it is considered as a model of care for those with life-limiting conditions in developed countries, home-based PC is still not sufficient. In our country, population gets older year by year. However, PC and home-care services are quite new and both are not yet up to the level to meet the needs. Therefore, PC services should be integrated into home-care services bearing in mind the sociocultural structure and national health policies of our country.

Anahtar Kelimeler: