Palliative medicine is a medical specialty that focuses on the many ways serious illness affects patients and their families. The goal is to help the "total patient" and their family relieve the physical and non-physical suffering that disease may bring.

Palliative care offers patients a full range of comfort, including expert pain and symptom control, goal-setting, distractions to re-direct their focus, breathing techniques, safe settings in which to have tough conversations and other tools. The goal is to improve the patient’s overall sense of well being.

Palliative Care does this by:

• Reducing or controlling pain and symptoms that interfere with daily life
• Counseling patients when medical decision-making becomes difficult
• Listening and providing support during all stages of the illness

Palliative Care differs from hospice care in that it helps people manage the pain, symptoms and stress of disease at any point during an illness, not just when an individual has an advanced illness and is pursuing comfort care. What sets Tidewell Palliative Care apart is that it is able to apply some of the art and science of hospice care to support good pain and symptom management, but through a broader scope. Tidewell Palliative Care employs the same good, solid medical principles of pain control used in hospice, but for patients who aren’t ready to abandon aggressive treatment.

Tidewell Palliative Care works in partnership with your doctor throughout the course of treatment and services are typically covered by Medicare/Medicaid and most private insurance. Your doctor can arrange a palliative care consultation for you by contacting Tidewell at (941) 894-1777 or faxing a request to (941) 894-1780.

Consultations can take place almost anywhere, including at your home or at a medical facility.