Providing Comfort at the End of Life [Dr. Cathy Leadabrand]

End-of-life care is about more than treating a disease—it’s about providing comfort, dignity, and quality of life for patients and their families. In this video, Dr. Cathy Leadabrand explains how palliative and hospice care help patients focus on symptom management, meaningful experiences, and peaceful transitions rather than solely on curing illness. The discussion highlights practical options and approaches to supporting patients in their final stages of life.

  • Focus shifts from disease to comfort: End-of-life care prioritizes symptom relief and quality of life over aggressive treatment.
  • Hospice and palliative care options: Care can be provided at home, in a hospital, or in a nursing facility depending on patient needs.
  • Patient-centered approach: Decisions about treatments are guided by whether they help the patient feel better.
  • Emotional relief: Hospice care often alleviates anxiety and stress for patients and their families.
  • Dignified, meaningful time: Patients can spend their final days at home or in a comfortable environment, engaging with loved ones and preparing for the end of life.

Frequently Asked Questions

End-of-life care focuses on providing comfort, dignity, and symptom management for patients in the final stages of a terminal illness. It emphasizes quality of life rather than curing the disease.

Hospice provides symptom management, emotional support, and guidance for patients and families. Care can be delivered at home, in a nursing facility, or in the hospital, allowing patients to spend meaningful time with loved ones.

Palliative care can be offered alongside treatment to relieve symptoms at any stage of illness, while hospice is typically for patients nearing the end of life and shifts focus fully to comfort and quality of life.

All interventions are evaluated based on whether they improve the patient’s comfort or quality of life. Treatments that do not provide these benefits are generally not pursued in hospice or palliative care.

Hospice care reduces stress and fear by providing guidance, emotional support, and a familiar environment for patients. Families can spend meaningful time with their loved ones without the constant focus on hospital visits or medical procedures.

Video Transcript

I am Dr. Cathy Leadabrand. I'm a hospitalist here at Brookings Hospital and I take care of patients from the beginning of the time they're admitted through their hospital stay and the time they're discharged.

How do you care for a patient at the end-of-life?

Traditional medicine is often focused at trying to treat a disease or modify the disease, but there's a lot of instances where as time goes by, perhaps they aren't getting better. And despite all the testing, all the medications and the x-rays, they just continue to decline. And there's a whole other side of medicine, where your focus is not on the disease and fixing it, but more on the symptoms and helping controlling the symptoms. And so, it's not a giving up, but patients often don't know that palliative care or hospice can be a wonderful tool to help them enjoy the time that they have left, try to get the symptoms out of the way so they can enjoy their life. And if they're at the very end of life, help them to have a peaceful death.

What options are available for hospice care?

We can also do hospice in a nursing home or sometimes we'll even do it in the hospital. But it's not so much a giving up, but changing your focus from the disease process to the symptoms. With every treatment on hospice and palliative care, you ask yourself, "Will it help them feel better? Will it help the patient feel better?" And if it doesn't, then you don't do that treatment.

How can hospice help end-of-life patients?

Many people fear the end-of-life, but often it's a huge relief or a weight off their shoulder when they have pursued palliative care. At the end-of-life, hospice can be a great tool, so a patient can not spend all their time in an ER or in the hospital or at a doctor's office, but spend more time at home. The nurse can come to them and help them with their symptoms so they can visit with their family, maybe reminisce, maybe say the things they want to say to their family members and have a peaceful, dignified death at home in a familiar surrounding.

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