Palliative Care vs. Hospice — Know the Difference
Palliative care can begin at any stage of a serious illness, alongside curative treatment. Hospice care is specifically for people who are no longer pursuing curative treatment and have a prognosis of six months or less. Families frequently confuse the two — and that confusion can cost them weeks or months of support they were eligible for earlier.
You don't have to choose between treatment and comfort.
Palliative care is not giving up. It runs alongside cancer treatment, heart failure management, and other active care. Ask your physician about a palliative care referral at any stage of a serious diagnosis.
Advance Directives & POLST Forms
An advance directive is a legal document stating your wishes for medical care if you become unable to communicate them. A POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) is a medical order — signed by a physician — that translates those wishes into specific treatment instructions. Both documents matter, and they work together.
- 1
Healthcare Proxy / Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare
Designates a person to make medical decisions on your behalf if you cannot. This is the most important document to have in place first.
- 2
Living Will
Documents your specific wishes about life-sustaining treatments — ventilators, feeding tubes, CPR — in various clinical scenarios.
- 3
POLST / MOLST Form
A physician-signed medical order that travels with the patient and is immediately actionable by emergency responders and hospital staff.
- 4
Store and Share
Keep originals accessible at home, share copies with your healthcare proxy, primary physician, and any facility providing care.
Having the Conversation
Most families avoid end-of-life conversations until a crisis makes them unavoidable — and then they have to make irreversible decisions under pressure, without knowing what their loved one would have wanted. Starting earlier doesn't accelerate anything. It protects everyone.
For Families
How to open the conversation with a parent or spouse, what questions to ask, and how to document the answers.
For Healthcare Providers
Communication frameworks for introducing goals-of-care conversations with patients and families in clinical settings.