[Supportive care: some definitions and principles]

Supportive care is defined as the totality of medical, nursing, psychosocial and rehabilitative support from the onset of the disease until possible fatal outcome, including all active therapeutic phases. This concept is thus quite large and heterogeneous. The term palliative care is reserved for the approach to the terminal patient. Hospital "Palliative Medicine" should be considered as a subspecialty of Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology. In palliative medicine, symptom control, and no longer prolongation of survival, takes a preponderant place to finally become the only goal to reach. In our mind, a Palliative Care Unit is not necessarily the final stay of a patient where spiritual support will be preponderant. One of our essential goals is always that the patient can come back in his family in collaboration with the family doctor, even for a short time. The ideal situation consists in short stays in the Unit to treat an acute complication before the patient is sent back home or to his Residency. Along this line, a very close collaboration with the family doctor is absolutely essential.