What is the TLC Pain & Palliative Medicine Practice?

The TLC Pain & Palliative Medicine Practice provides comprehensive, interdisciplinary care for patients with advanced illness. Treatment goals focus on relieving suffering and improving quality of life.

Palliative Medicine is offered at the same time as other appropriate medical treatments such as chemotherapy, artificial administration of food and fluids and surgery. It is a consultative service and the providers coordinate care in conjunction with the patient's primary care physician and the patients other specialists in order to meet the patient and family goals.

 

TLC Pain & Palliative Medicine Practice

• Physicians with board-certification in hospice and palliative care medicine
• Nurse Practitioner with board-certification in hospice and palliative care medicine
• Licensed social worker

 

How Do I Consult?

Consultations will be provided at St. Mary’s Hospital. Call (520) 618-1080 to initiate a consultation. You will be connected with a member of the TLC Pain & Palliative Medicine Practice who will assist you with the referral process and setting up a visit.

Goals May Include:

Managing difficult symptoms

• Lessening pain, nausea, anxiety, fatigue, depression, shortness of breath, constipation, loss of appetite and other symptoms that may accompany serious illness or side effects of treatment.

Addressing changing goals of care

• Helping patients and families consider care options and make decisions about quality of life
• Interpreting the benefits and burdens of care such as tests, surgeries or medication
• Helping patients and families determine when or if to begin or discontinue treatments

Enhancing patient and family support

• Supporting communication in complicated family situations
• Provide spiritual and emotional support throughout the course of illness
• Promote the best quality of life
• Assist with end of life decisions
• If death is near, help the patient and family create meaning by supporting reflection about the patient's life, repair relationships and create memories

Assisting with discharge from the hospitals and other settings

• Helping with needed referrals for care at home
• Assisting with placement in other levels of care
• Coordination of insurance or community services

Why a Palliative Medicine Consultation?

• Recurrent hospital admissions or ER visits for advanced illnesses
• Lack of response to curative therapies
• Changing goals of care
• Assistance with end-of-life planning, including advance directives
• Conflicts among the patient and/or the family regarding illness management or treatment course
• Difficult symptom management compromising the patient's ability to continue treatment or maintain quality of life
• Spiritual distress or loss of hope
• Manage palliative wound care (non-healing wounds)
• Prolonged Intensive Care Unit (ICU) stay
• Second prognosis
• Assistance to withdraw life-sustaining equipment

Diagnoses Appropriate for a Palliative Medicine Consultation

• Cancer
• Advanced Lung Disease
• Advanced Liver Disease
• Advanced Renal Disease
• Advanced Cardiac Disease
• Advanced Neurological Disease
• Multi-System Failure
• AIDS
• Life-limiting illness
• Repeated hospitalizations for the same diagnosis

For more information, please call the TLC office, (520) 618-1080.