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| Overview |
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The Department of Pain and Palliative Care at MNJIO &RCC was inaugurated on 9 th December 2003. Since then it has evolved to become a full fledged department with facilities to give care to the patients and their families suffering from incurable illnesses like cancer and also a nodal training and research centre in the state.
It is based on a philosophy of care aiming at enabling people to live with the disease, as free of symptoms and psychosocial problems as possible. |
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| The focus of treatment is to improve quality of life by |
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Affirming life |
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Recognizing dying as a normal process and neither hastening nor postponing death. |
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Empowering families to care for the patient, by training them in basic nursing chores and emotional support. |
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Helping patients and families prepare for living with the disease, and when necessary, for death. |
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| The range of difficult physical problems that are being taken of are like |
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Pain |
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Breathlessness |
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Wounds |
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Difficulty in swallowing |
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Constipation or diarrhea |
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Nausea and vomiting. |
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Lymphedema |
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| Emotional support in the form of |
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Listening and effective communication |
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Looking for hidden anxieties or depression and relieving them |
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A relationship based on trust and honesty |
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'Being there' and spending time |
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Adequate Counseling |
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| Social support to prevent |
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Social isolation |
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Family conflicts and disruption of relationships |
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Social stigma |
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Disruption due to financial reasons. |
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| Spiritual care to the patient by helping them to find the meaning of life and support them in the journey. |
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| Delivery of Care |
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out-patient (OP) Facility: Majority of patients are seen on an out-patient basis. The Consultation timing is from 9 am to 2 PM, Monday to Saturday. There is a facility for day care adjacent to the OP consultation room. Patients are kept there for day care, various nursing and medical procedures and for the purpose of training and empowerment of the carer to take care of the patients.
Oral morphine is given free to all the patients. All other drugs are also free to majority of patients who are poor.
In-patient care: Patients who are very sick with difficult symptom control, terminal care and for psychosocial issues are given care through inpatient facilities. The care is state of the art with the latest international standards of clinical care and use of equipments like portable infusion pumps for maintaining infusion of medications.
Soon we plan to begin home care services for patients residing in and around Hyderabad.
The department also plans to extend the support and guidance to organization taking care of patients suffering from other incurable illnesses like HIV/AIDS, advanced respiratory, cardiac and neurological diseases.
The World Health Organization recommends that, to be effective, any palliative care policy has to address all three sides of the following triangle with the State Policy at the base, their broad objective being to improve access to palliative care to all those who need it. |
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The following is the some of the activities of the department in that direction:
Training and Education
MNJ IO, the Nodal Training Center
Because of the initiatives taken by our institution, a joint collaboration of the International Network of Cancer Treatment and Research (INCTR), the American Cancer Society and Pallium India , has identified the MNJ IO and RCC as one of the nodal center to develop the center of excellence in palliative care in India . This project is called 'Indian Palliative Care Network' (IPN). The Program Director for this project, is working with this institute for a period of one year to help in developing this project. Several international and national faculty of prominence visit the department to participate in the teaching activities. The project supports us in the form of funding, faculty and guidance.
Many research projects are in the pipeline with their assistance. Some of the ongoing research projects are, 'incidence of common symptoms in head and neck patients', 'Patient Compliance' and 'the impact of palliative care intervention in symptom control'. |
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