Introduction
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), palliative care is “ palliative care are "... an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families who are faced with problems associated with incurable diseases, through the prevention and relief of suffering through early identification and optimal treatment of pain and other problems of a physical, psychological, social and spiritual nature.
Therefore, they:
• affirm life and consider death as a natural event;
• they do not accelerate or delay death, they have nothing to do with any form of aggressive treatment or euthanasia;
• provide relief from pain and other ailments;
• integrate the health aspects with the psychological, social and spiritual aspects of assistance;
• offer a family support system at all stages;
• Can be early applied during the course of the disease, in conjunction with the remedies that try to prolong life, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
This section allows readers to obtain information regarding patient’s taking on charge that needs palliative care and the closeness of his/her family from both a health and a human viewpoint.
Those requiring more information about palliative care and pain therapy can access Italian Ministry of Health page.
Services guaranteed by the NHS
To terminally ill patients (when it is considered probable that death will occur within 12 months) the National Health Service (SSN) offers free, without payment of any co-payment, home health and social-health assistance, territorial residential assistance and semi-residential as well as treatments provided during hospitalization and home hospital interventions.
Therapeutic assistance treatment
Patients’ medical treatment is guaranteed by the network of palliative care:that is a functional aggregation of the activities of palliative care already carried out in hospital, in hospice, at home and in other residential facilities, in a specific territorial area at the regional level.
Per avere maggiori informazioni visita la pagina dedicata all’ “Terminal patients’ medical treatment” da parte del Ministero della Salute.
Use of medicines
To provide a more effective treatment of pain among terminal patients or patients affected by severe chronic pain, a series of regulation have been introduced with the specific aim to simply the use of opiate analgesics besides the traditional ones.
A further important facilitation for patients was that of providing for the administration of pain-relieving drugs in integrated domiciliary treatments,while patients in patients discharged from hospitalization can receive directly from the hospital medicines necessary for the first cycle of the therapy.
Those requiring more information, of legal nature as well, can visit the page of the Italian Ministry of Health regarding medicines for pain relief.
Trova Strutture
This section allows readers to find hospices across national territory so as to receive answers about his/her health needs in case.
Several professional competences cooperate within the wall of hospices embedded in a équipe. The équipe is made of a physician, a psychologist, a nurse, a social assistant, a spiritual assistant and a voluntary.
Hospices are located inside hospital facilities or across national territory and can be managed directly from the related Local Health Unit (ASL) or from a voluntary association cooperating with the latter. In such a context services of night and residential admission (Day Hospital and Day Hospice) are supplied.
