Specialist palliative care for Parkinson's disease

Abstract

Patients, and their families, with Parkinson's disease (PD) and related disorders face many issues, including physical, psychological, social and spiritual. Palliative care is an essential part of care from the time of diagnosis, and should be provided by all services involved with the patient and family. Specialist palliative care is able to support the overall care particularly for complex issues-whether symptoms or psychosocial and spiritual problems, ethical and decisions making issues, and at the end of life. This should be in collaboration with other teams, working together to improve the quality of life (QOL) of patients and families, supporting the professional teams and enabling patients to be as fully involved in the decisions about their care and at the end of life.