This video is intended for health and care professionals interested in promoting early palliative care. It is available in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French. This short video aims to help health and care professionals to identify people who are living with progressive illnesses better, to assess their needs in a timely manner and to start discussing and planning future care with them.It explains the reasons for early palliative care. Early palliative care improves life’s quality and in some cases, may even prolong life. It promotes “realistic medicine," an approach which puts the person receiving health and care at the centre of decision-making (Chief Medical Officer for Scotland).Read the full report Realising Realistic MedicineClinicians, patients and families can all benefit from carefully integrating early palliative care with on-going treatment so people can both live and die well.The information in this video is based on detailed research with patients, families, doctors, nurses and other health and care professionals about people's experiences living with declining health and dying. 'Palliative Care from Diagnosis to Death' was published in February 2017 in the BMJ. Read the full article here. Key takeaway points Identify people early and introduce early, integrated palliative careConsider patients' different dimensions of need at present, and discuss what matters most to themDiscuss what happens in the different illness trajectories so they know when they might need the most help Make an individual anticipatory care plan with patients and families; document, communicate and review this regularly with all involvedIf you wish to show this video to a group for teaching purposes, please see the accompanying notes and suggested discussion questions: Document Professional group notes for Early Palliative Care (453.36 KB / PDF) This video is available in 4 additional languages Spanish: The voiceover and text of this video have been translated into Spanish Italian: The voiceover of this video has been translated into Italian Portuguese: The text of this video has been translated into Portuguese French: The text of this video has been translated into French This article was published on 2024-09-24