Palliative Care Terminology

Use this glossary to explain common terms patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals may hear when discussing serious illness, comfort, treatment choices, and quality of life.

Palliative care focuses on the whole person and may address physical symptoms, emotional and psychological concerns, social needs, spiritual concerns, practical questions, and caregiver support. It can be provided at any age or stage of illness and may be given along with treatment intended to control or cure a disease.

Core concepts and care approaches

Palliative care: Patient- and family-centered care that helps prevent or relieve symptoms and improve quality of life for people living with serious or life-threatening illness. It may be provided with or without disease-directed treatment.
Supportive care: Care that helps manage symptoms, treatment side effects, emotional concerns, practical needs, and other effects of illness. Supportive care and palliative care may overlap.
Palliative treatment: Treatment intended to relieve symptoms, improve function, or increase comfort rather than cure the underlying disease. It may include medication, radiation, surgery, or another treatment when the goal is symptom relief.
Symptom management: Assessing, preventing, and treating symptoms such as pain, nausea, fatigue, shortness of breath, anxiety, or insomnia.
Quality of life: A person’s overall well-being, including physical comfort, emotional health, relationships, ability to function, and ability to participate in meaningful activities.
Goals of care: The outcomes and priorities that matter most to a person, such as comfort, spending time at home, maintaining independence, or pursuing additional treatment.
Person-centered care: Care that respects a person’s values, preferences, needs, culture, and individual goals.
Family-centered care: Care that recognizes the important role of family members and caregivers and includes them in communication and support when the person receiving care wishes.
Interdisciplinary team: A group of healthcare professionals who work together to address different aspects of care. The team may include physicians, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, therapists, chaplains, and other specialists.
Palliative care consultation: A review by a palliative care specialist or team to assess symptoms, clarify goals, support decision-making, and coordinate care. A consultation does not automatically mean that disease-directed treatment will stop.
Care plan: A written or shared plan describing a person’s care needs, treatment preferences, symptoms, support services, and follow-up.

Hospice and comfort-focused care

Hospice care: Specialized care for a person with a terminal illness when the primary goal has shifted to comfort, quality of life, and support rather than curing or controlling the disease. Hospice also supports family members and caregivers.
Palliative care versus hospice care: Palliative care may begin at diagnosis and continue during treatment. Hospice is a type of end-of-life care that generally begins when treatment intended to cure or control the disease is no longer the primary goal. Eligibility rules and services vary by location and program.
End-of-life care: Physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and practical care provided during the final phase of a person’s life.
Comfort care: Care focused on relieving symptoms, reducing distress, and supporting dignity and quality of life. Comfort care may be provided in a hospital, hospice, home, or other care setting.
Comfort measures only: A care plan in which the focus is on comfort and relief of suffering rather than interventions intended to prolong life. The exact meaning and documentation may vary by healthcare organization.
Palliative sedation: Carefully monitored use of medication to reduce awareness when a person has severe, otherwise unrelieved suffering near the end of life. This is a specialized clinical decision and is different from intentionally causing death.
Home hospice: Hospice services provided in a person’s home, with visits and support coordinated by the hospice team.
Inpatient hospice: Hospice care provided in a dedicated hospice facility, hospital unit, or other inpatient setting when symptoms or care needs cannot be managed safely at home.

Symptoms and supportive services

Pain management: Assessment and treatment of pain using medication, procedures, rehabilitation, counseling, and other approaches that match the person’s goals and condition.
Dyspnea: The medical term for shortness of breath or the feeling of having difficulty breathing.
Symptom burden: The combined effect of a person’s symptoms on comfort, daily activities, emotional well-being, and quality of life.
Delirium: A sudden change in attention, awareness, or thinking that may include confusion, restlessness, sleepiness, or changes in behavior.
Psychosocial support: Support for emotional, mental, social, relationship, financial, work-related, and practical concerns connected to illness.
Spiritual care: Support for a person’s beliefs, values, meaning, sources of hope, and spiritual or religious concerns. Spiritual care does not require a particular faith.
Caregiver support: Education, communication, counseling, practical assistance, and other services that help family members or other caregivers provide care and protect their own well-being.
Respite care: Short-term relief for a caregiver through temporary care provided by another person, service, facility, or hospice program.
Bereavement support: Emotional, psychosocial, and spiritual support for people coping with grief before or after the death of someone close to them.
Grief: The emotional, physical, social, and spiritual response to loss. Grief is personal and may change over time.
Prognosis: The expected course or outcome of an illness. A prognosis is an estimate, not a guaranteed prediction.
Functional status: A description of what a person can do in daily life, such as walking, eating, bathing, communicating, or managing medications.

Advance care planning and medical decisions

Advance care planning: An ongoing process of reflecting on personal values, learning about healthcare choices, discussing wishes with loved ones and healthcare professionals, and documenting preferences for future care.
Advance directive: A legal document that states a person’s wishes about medical care if they become unable to make or communicate decisions. Laws and document requirements vary by location.
Living will: A type of advance directive that describes the medical treatments a person would or would not want if they cannot speak for themselves.
Healthcare proxy: A person chosen to make healthcare decisions for someone who cannot make or communicate decisions. Depending on local law, this person may also be called a healthcare agent, surrogate, or medical power of attorney.
Surrogate decision-maker: A person authorized to make healthcare decisions when the patient cannot make decisions. The decision-maker should generally follow the patient’s known wishes or act according to applicable law.
Shared decision-making: A process in which the patient, family or decision-maker, and healthcare team discuss options, benefits, risks, uncertainties, and personal goals before making a care decision.
Goals-of-care conversation: A discussion about what matters most to a person and how those priorities should guide treatment and care decisions.
Code status: A medical plan that documents which emergency treatments should be used if a person’s heart stops or they cannot breathe.
Do not resuscitate (DNR) order: A medical order instructing the healthcare team not to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation if a person’s heart stops or they stop breathing. A DNR order does not automatically mean that other treatment or comfort care will stop.
Do not intubate (DNI) order: A medical order stating that a person does not want an endotracheal breathing tube placed. Other treatments, including oxygen or noninvasive breathing support, may still be considered depending on the care plan.
Life-sustaining treatment: Treatment that helps maintain or replace vital body functions, such as CPR, mechanical ventilation, dialysis, or artificial nutrition and hydration. A person may choose to receive, limit, or decline specific treatments.
Medical orders for life-sustaining treatment: Clinician-signed medical orders that translate a person’s current treatment preferences into instructions for emergency and other healthcare settings. The form name and legal requirements vary by location, including POLST, MOLST, or similar forms.
Artificial nutrition and hydration: Providing nutrition or fluids through a tube or vein rather than by eating and drinking normally. Decisions about this treatment should be discussed with the person’s healthcare team and guided by the individual’s goals and condition.

Palliative Care Terminology

A glossary of common terms related to comfort, symptom management, care planning, hospice, and support.