Department of Pain and Palliative Care

The department of pain and palliative medicine at Dhawan Hospital focuses on the active total care of the person suffering from advanced and non-responsive diseases as well as their families. It is concerned with quality of life and addresses physical, psychological, social and spiritual aspects of suffering. The department seeks to provide total care for people suffering from cancer and chronic non cancerous ailments.

• Improving quality of life
• Rehabilitation for the patients and their relatives
• Offer support to other members in the family
• Chronic cancer pain management
• Chronic pain management

Out-Patient Services

Utilising a team of committed palliative care physicians, nurses, social workers and office staff, we aim at improving quality of life with the available resources. We treat the person as a whole and not just the disease.

• Cancer: pain, symptom and supportive management.
• Chronic pain: includes patients mainly with chronic pain (pancreatitis, peripheral vascular disease, low backache, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain syndromes, post-herpetic neuralgia etc.)
• Lymphoedema: both cancerous and non-cancerous origin
• Advanced, non-responsive and debilitating diseases like chronic cerebrovascular accidents, HIV infection, end-stage systemic diseases (heart diseases, renal disease, liver disease), etc.

In-Patient Care

• In-patient care is provided for patients when symptoms like pain, nausea, vomiting, constipation, intestinal obstruction, breathlessness, insomnia, delirium, convulsions, bedsores, etc., that are difficult to control on out-patient basis.
• Empowerment of the family members in various aspects of patient care like skin care, mouth care, bedsore care, etc., is undertaken to make them self-reliant and confident. We encourage them to be actively involved in the care for their loved ones.
• In-patient service includes end of life care, one of the components of palliative care. Our palliative medicine department liaisons with the intensive care units to provide better end of life care in an attempt to provide ‘A Good Death’ in the presence of their loved ones. This facility is extended to patients of all specialties, who are terminally ill.

Dr Sarita Dhawan

MD (Anesthetist)
Ex Resident PGIMER, Chandigarh