Palliative care

The terminally ill are often treated poorly in the advanced stages of their disease, as both healthcare professionals and relatives want to extend their lives at any cost. Usually, we cannot guarantee this, but we can reduce or eliminate their suffering and improve the quality of the remaining days of their lives. 

We try to relieve our patients of pain and other symptoms as much as possible but at the same time care for their mental and spiritual needs and the needs of their relatives. We help them live their life to the highest possible quality (to the best of their ability) and, as far as possible, actively up to their death, and we provide assistance to the patient's family, both during the disease and after the patient's death, at the time of mourning. We do not accelerate or delay death; we accept it as a natural process. We try to develop compassion and hope through our work.

Good communication between staff, patients and relatives is crucial for quality palliative care. The patients and their relatives should confide in the professionals involved in the palliative care team with their concerns, wishes and expectations. It is also important that they actively participate in the planning of treatment procedures for times when they will not be able to make active decisions themselves (refusal of hospital treatment in the last stage of disease, refusal of resuscitation and other procedures of futile attempts at prolonging life). Thus, the patients and their relatives become equal members of the team and actively participate in the treatment.

Members of the palliative team of the University Clinic Golnik

The help of the palliative team at the University Clinic Golnik is primarily intended for patients with lung cancer and other chronic incurable diseases that come to us for treatment (e.g. for chemotherapy) but are also monitored later in the course of advanced disease.