Exceptional Palliative Care

If you're searching for the very best palliative care — including pain management — you need look no further than right here in our community at Mount Sinai Queens.

A hundred years ago, people who became sick either recovered or died quickly. There was little need for planning, coordination or ethical discussions. Today, however, most Americans will live well into their seventies and eighties and will spend more time trying to manage multiple chronic illnesses and the pain and other symptoms those illnesses can cause.

Mount Sinai Queens defines palliative care as the enhanced medical and extra-medical care of patients with severe, advanced illnesses. Palliative care focuses on reducing the severity of the symptoms of disease or slowing its progression, and can be delivered with or without appropriate medical therapies, and can even incorporate advanced, high-tech curative treatment.

To answer our neighbors' pressing need for exceptional palliative care, we have built a premiere program that takes all your and your family's needs into consideration. In fact, our hospital-wide palliative care program was recently awarded a $200,000 grant from The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc. Now any inpatient or physician can call for a palliative care consult.

The Patient and Family

Palliative care is by definition patient-centered care. With the patient and his or her family as the central participants, the palliative care team seeks to provide these key services:

• Our palliative care team talks, listens and discovers what the patient and the family knows and expects. Do they understand the patient's diagnosis? Do they fully understand the options available to them? What are their expectations and goals? Are those expectations realistic and how can they best be attained?
• With the patient, family and the patient care team, the palliative care team facilitates a care plan that enables the patient to reach optimum goals.  Reactive care -- therapies that are given in a spontaneous, direct reaction to an event without any preplanned thinking or agreement -- is avoided. Curative therapies or medical interventions that the patient agrees to, however, will be incorporated.
• A thoughtful pain management and symptom relief plan is designed, including the latest medications and pain-relieving techniques. The patient's pain is always monitored and taken seriously with the level of pain considered a vital sign such as temperature or blood pressure.
• Education and counseling about advanced directives are given to the patient and the family, including a thorough discussion about healthcare proxies, living wills and do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders. Fully educated about these options, the patient can make sound, comfortable and informed decisions.
• Counseling and support are provided whether the patient or the family needs individual support, peer support groups, spiritual counseling or bereavement counseling.
• The palliative care team continues to maintain and enhance communication through daily contact and inclusion in daily rounds, making adjustments to the care plan as necessary.
• Assistance is provided to the patient and the family with discharge planning including referrals to hospice, a skilled nursing facility or home care when necessary.

Exceptional Professionals

Our elite team of board-certified medical intensivists, palliative care specialists, nurse practitioners and nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers collaborate to provide customized palliative care with a focus on your unique history.

Our exceptional palliative care is enriched by the world-renown expertise and resources of one of the premiere medical centers in the country, the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.