Hopeless cases, cautionary tales

Hospice Palliative Care Units are usually seen as a last resting place for patients with malignant disease. The provision of terminal care is mistakenly seen by some outsiders as the only function of these units.

In this environment it is very easy for all patients admitted to these units to be seen in the same light. This is a potentially hazardous situation since patients who could recover may miss out on appropriate therapy, particularly if it is seen as being too interventional. Hospice and palliative care staff need to be aware of this pitfall. We illustrate this with three cases of patients who were referred to hospice/palliative care units for terminal care and who, with appropriate ‘interventional’ treatment, recovered sufficiently to return home for a significant survival time with good quality of life.