Where do we go from here? A palliative care perspective

Key principles of palliative care shed light on future opportunities and challenges for improving patient care and family support within critical care. Interdisciplinary team approaches to patient comfort and family support, coordination and continuity of care, communication as an ethical and therapeutic modality, assistance with emotional, social and spiritual experience, including issues of life completion, bereavement support to families and attention to staff well-being are all foci for future clinical and programmatic development and research. By collaborating to care well for the critically ill or injured patients and extend support for their families, the disciplines of critical care and palliative care can complete one another.