The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association endorses the exact definition of palliative care originating from the National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care (NCP), which states: “Palliative Care means patient and familycentered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering. Palliative care throughout the continuum of illness involves addressing the physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs and [facilitating] patient autonomy, access to information, and choice” (NCP, 2013, p. 9). The National Consensus Project further explains, “Palliative care is operationalized through effective management of pain and other distressing symptoms, while incorporating psychosocial and spiritual care with consideration of patient/family needs, preferences, values, beliefs, and culture. Evaluation and treatment should be comprehensive and patient-centered with a focus on the central role of the family unit in decision-making. Palliative care affirms life by supporting the patient and family’s goals for the future, including their hopes for cure or life-prolongation, as well as their hopes for peace and dignity throughout the course of illness, the dying process, and death” (NCP, 2013, p. 9).

The realm of palliative care services is individualized to the patient and family, occurring in the context of the diagnosis and time of initiation of services. Palliative care includes supportive counseling services, pain and symptom management, discharge planning, hospice care, and bereavement services after death. Palliative care may be delivered simultaneously with life-prolonging therapies, during all phases of illness. However, there are specific assumptions that underlie palliative care (NCP, 2013):