Position Paper- Palliative vs Curative care.

According to the World Heath Organisation (WHO, 2011), Palliative care is an approach, which aims to improve quality of life of patients and families who are crippled with life threatening illnesses. Alternatively, curative care is an approach that aims to prolong life through technological advances and medicine. It seems that the best approach to health care, would be to improve the quality of life as well as prolong life, through a combination of both curative and palliative care.

The best approach to health care is a combination of both curative and palliative care. Combining the best of life prolonging technological advances whilst maximising quality of life should be the ultimate
The aim of palliative care is to relive symptoms of ill patients and improve quality of life. Despite the technological advancements in medicine, many illnesses elude cure. Thus it leaves terminally ill patients, and patients with chronic diseases with palliative care being a necessity (Doyle et, al. 20). Therefore palliative is highly important and possibly the only option for the treatment of those individuals. Palliative care specifically cares for those who are terminally ill focusing not on curing them but treating their symptoms, making them comfortable while controlling their pain. It allows the patient to feel in control of their treatment and their quality of life. It also allows individuals and families to understand that dying is a normal stage and an inherent part of life, and to come to terms with the inevitable. Through a developmental approach, this step presents perspective and opportunity for the individual to discover ways of growing and developing towards a “self-determined sense of completion in personal, interpersonal and spiritual realms of life” (Byock, 2000). During this last stage of life, palliative care of terminally ill patients allows growth and a sense of closure between patients and families, both individually and together (Byock, 2000). These patients are offered not only relief from pain and other symptoms, but also psychological and emotional support from