Supportive and palliative care: a poorly understood science for the perioperative clinician

Patients with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses develop a variety of debilitating treatment-related and disease-related symptoms which can be quite distressing and detrimental to their quality of life. These may be physical, psychosocial or spiritual. Palliative care offers a way to deal with such challenging medical complexities that arise in their lives. However, it appears that knowledge about this discipline is still limited among a majority of clinicians in diverse fields of medicine and the utilisation of its services is minimal. In this work, we explain the concept, the scope of practice and the significance of palliative and supportive care services to the perioperative clinician, with the aim of providing education, increasing awareness and encouraging collaboration. The goal is to ultimately achieve the best care for shared patients, which will be in the common interest of the two disciplines.