Pallative Care, Outpatient - Overview

The health professionals at UAB Center for Palliative and Supportive Care Clinics provide compassionate care for patients with life-threatening or life-changing conditions. Our staff helps patients to address symptoms they may experience, set goals for care, and live as well as they can for as long as they can.

With an interdisciplinary approach, our physicians, fellows, physician assistant, psychologist, social worker, and nutritionist work together to develop an individual plan of care for each patient to meet their need for comfort and quality of life. The team not only assists patients with pain management, but also with their emotional, social, family, and spiritual needs. In addition, the clinic also refers patients to complementary providers who may offer symptom ease with treatments such as massage, hypnotherapy and acupuncture.

The health professionals at the UAB Center for Palliative and Supportive Care clinics help patients manage the side effects associated with conditions such as cancer, advanced heart failure, HIV, and advanced lung disease. Through all stages of an illness, the team helps patients make decisions about their care to meet their need for comfort and quality of life. Unlike Hospice, the Palliative and Supportive Care Clinics staff work with patients any time during their treatment, including treatments intended to help cure them.

The center also serves as a research and training facility to advance the treatment of patients who are suffering. Areas of focus include:

• Optimal health care delivery for complex and advanced illness.
• Ethics and spirituality.
• Communication between medical professionals and patients.
• Caregiver and family support.
• Symptom support.
• Survivorship, especially for breast, head and neck, and cancer survivors.