Home-Based Palliative Care Stories

The Enguídanos LabUSC Leonard Davis conducted home-based palliative care stories, funded in part by Heart to Heart Hospice Foundation.

Over the past decade, palliative care services have rapidly expanded and are now provided within most large medical centers, with additional programs developing in outpatient clinics, cancer clinics, home-based programs, and now community-based programs. The rapid growth of palliative care programs is due, largely, to the enormous benefits from palliative care experienced by patients and their family members along with lowered costs of medical care for insurers and health care providers.

Broadly defined, palliative care is specialized medical care for seriously ill patients that focuses on pain and symptom relief as well as psychosocial and spiritual support, with the goal of improving quality of life for patients and their family members. Yet, despite these overwhelmingly positive outcomes, there are significant barriers to palliative care services. One primary barrier is the lack of consumer knowledge of palliative care.

The intention of this project was the first step in bridging this gap in consumer knowledge of palliative care. Dr. Susan Enguidanos, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and her talented team, used a theoretical and evidence-based, consumer-driven approach to develop and disseminate media materials to increase awareness and knowledge of palliative care services.

Research in the effectiveness of the videos revealed that, after viewing videos, older adults demonstrated significantly improved knowledge of palliative care and greater intentions of enrolling themselves or a loved on in palliative care should they develop a serious illness.

Janice Swank

In this video, Janice discusses her husband’s experience with Home-based Palliative Care and why she has now elected to receive it herself.

Ted Balaska

In this video, Ted discusses how palliative care is helping him with side effects of his cancer and cancer treatment and also helping him visit his family in Detroit.

Dan and Mary McCoy

In this video, Mary and her husband Dan talk about the services Mary’s palliative care team provides.

Dorothy Crowe

In this video, Dorothy discusses her experience with Home-based Palliative Care.

Aspen Bassett

In this video, Aspen discusses her experience with Home-based Palliative Care.

Zdravko Atanassov

In this video, Zdravko discusses his experience with Home-based Palliative Care.