New Word of the Week: Palliative
Last week I learned and wrote about Valorisation. This week I learned about Palliative. Tessa picked up this word at work. She works at a scientific publishing house. The word is used in medicine to describe how a drug works.
There are curative, palliative, symptomatic and prophylactic treatments:
Curative
Serving or tending to cure
You actually get better
Symptomatic
Constituting a symptom, as of a disease
You feel better
Prophylactic
A prophylactic measure such as a vaccine
You don’t get sick at all
Palliative
Treatment that concentrates on reducing the severity of disease symptoms or slowing the disease’s progress, rather than providing a cure
You don’t get sicker and you feel better
With a palliative solution you don’t actually fix something but stop the problem from getting bigger and make sure it doesn’t bother you anymore.
That is interesting! If you are sick you obviously would always go for the curative cure. But in business that might not always be the case. Sometimes it is better to opt for a quick and dirty cure and just make sure the problem doesn’t get out of hand.
Example: if two people don’t get along in your team you won’t spend weeks in group sessions to make them like each other. You just use a palliative solution. You seperate them and stop the problem from getting bigger.
Can you come up with similar palliative solution that you have used or are using in your business? Looking forward to hearing about it…
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Palliative is exactly (to my knowledge) exclusively used in a health care context. Its the opposite of curative. Palliative care aims to relieve the symptoms without curing. It’s not true that, with palliative care, you will not get sicker. Palliative care is not directed to the sickness but the symptoms that are a result of it.
It’s mostly used in the context of palliatieve terminal care. For instance cancer patients. The treatment they get is aimed to improve the quality of life like nausea, pain, or psychological discomfort like fear (of dying). With good palliative care, euthanasia will be less necessary.
It’s expected that palliatieve care will soon develop into one of the most important sectors in the health care system. Actually, most of us will receive palliative care as this will be the care all of us will receive because ,most of us don’t die instantly from a car crash for instance. For more information, see http://www.palliatievezorg.nl
Thanks Erik, but what you describe sounds a bit like Symptomatic treatment. Palliative not only treats symptoms but also tries to stop or delay the advancement of the disease. Most AIDS cures are Palliative cures. They stop the disease in its track but don’t actually cure you. That is very different from a Symptomatic cure where only the symptoms are treated.
I agree with Erik.
Here’s an informative article I read on palliative care a couple years ago:
http://www.sciam.com/article.c.....9EC5880000
:) nmw
No Boris, Palliative care does not treat the disease. It treats symptoms but not the disease.
Erik:
Wikipedia: “Palliative care (palliare, to cloak) is any form of medical care or treatment that concentrates on reducing the severity of disease symptoms or slowing the disease’s progress, rather than providing a cure”
It does not CURE the disease but it can sometimes SLOW the spreading of a disease. If you only concentrate on symptoms, as you describe, then it would be a Symptomatic cure.
Oh Erik, I did change the description into “You don’t get sicker and you feel better”….
SLowing the disease is not curing the disease. People receiving palliative care can no longer be cured. They receive for example radiation therapy to reduce the size of the tumor, not in the hope that the patient will be cured but to relieve for example the pain resullting from it. Anyway, I think we understand each other.
Je omschrijving is nog steeds niet goed hoor. De fout zit hem in “you don’t get sicker”. Dat is eenvoudigweg niet waar. Je wordt wel zieker maar zal je minder oncomfortabel voelen omdat de behandeling zich richt op kwaliteit van leven. Als pallatieve patienten niet sicker zouden worden, zouden ze blijven leven. En dat is gewoon niet zo
A palliative solution can be great indeed if you are consifering the diseases of the office grapevine and other personnel issues in the workplace. There are some that feel that a cure is available for problem employees such as termination from employment!