Palliative care: A gerontological perspective

Abstract

Palliative care is a well-defined and relatively well structured nursing model of care for patients experiencing metastatic diseases and who are predicted to die prematurely as a result of their illness. However, not all persons will die of metastatic diseases. Some will die as a result of an aging process and some might die as a result of non-metastatic diseases. In these cases the time of dying will also not come as a surprise, but it may be is less predictable. Both palliative care and gerontological care are seen as specialised nursing models of care. The similarity in both models is that there is a salient expectation of death within a shorter than average period of time. The question therefor arises whether there is a difference between these two nursing care models where one is focussing on patients who are expected to die from metastatic diseases and the other is focussing on patients expected to die from non-metastatic diseases.