Why Palliative Medicine?

My first experience in Palliative Medicine was during my residency years when as Junior Regsitrar in Radiation Oncology in a prestigious institute (Madras Medical College) , the drive and focus is more on learning Curative Medicine.

On attending a small workshop on Palliative care , I started to think that it deals with more people who are dying and is the last hope when everything else fails.That was the last time I ever thought of palliative medicine as a branch of interest for me to dwell further.

Fast forward to December 2014 ,reading about the course in University Of Cape Town , South Africa , I started to realise it is more to deal with people who are ‘living’ rather than people who are ”dying’.

I needed answers to know how can the terminally ill patients and their relatives be better taken care of.

‘Quality of Life’ is the single most important sentence that got me to take the course.

Ever since the known existence of human beings , we have all bee  doing things with single end point in mind and that is “How can we improve the Quality of our Life?”. It holds true for all the activities we do whether it is to brush our teeth or buy that new gadget in the market.All with one purpose and belief that it will improve the Quality of our Living.

That is what is so good about Palliative Medicine , it is a Holistic Inside -Out Approach to a patient !

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *