[Supporting palliative care patients]

Since the early days of the discipline, the fundamental principles of palliative care have been focusing on recognizing patient "overall suffering" and the necessity for caregivers to work as a team. Besides curative medicine, it becomes necessary to acknowledge a caring medicine which, based on the relationship to the sick one, aims at establishing with the latter a real life project until their very last days. To the patient, considered as a "subject of care", a man or a woman living up to the very last breath, the team will offer supportive care, quality of life, individualized care, in a climate of real confidence, an essential component of any relationship. In palliative supportive care, techniques, therapies and specific, effective and quality knowledge are indispensable. Moreover, palliative and supportive care cannot be separated from doubt and questioning, nor limited to a fulfilled and completed mission, since the other's life is and will remain, from their own personal assessment, that of the dying patient who sometimes, in my role of caregiver and witness, I have the privilege to meet.