Custom Medicine For Palliative Care

Comfort Care though Customized Medicine

The final stages of terminal illness for patients, families, and caregivers is very difficult. Palliative care professionals work diligently to provide comfort care and dignity to those patients in need of end-of-life care.

As part of that team, pharmacists play an important role in providing the much needed medications to help those patients under palliative care. Palliative care patients many times need medication support for a variety of symptoms.

Some palliative care patients have a difficult time taking commercially available medications, due to an inability to swallow or discomfort due to injection. A custom-made medication may be a more compassionate and practical way to meet the needs of a palliative care patient.

Personalized Medication for Pain Management and Symptom Control

Our pharmacy is able to compound medications to offer a personalized, compassionate way to meet the needs of palliative care patients, especially those that become frail and weak.

Compounding is the art and science of making custom medication. Because each person is unique and each person’s end-of-life experience is unique, one-size-fits-all medication isn’t always the best choice. Personalized medicine may be the best and most appropriate way to meet the needs of an individual during end-of-life comfort care.

Working closely with palliative care teams, our compounding pharmacists can prepare medications in the precise strength needed, and in easy to administer dosage forms such as:

• Topical creams to help provide pain relief right at the specific site while minimizing sedation
• Topical gels rubbed into the wrists to help with nausea and vomiting
• Flavored lozenges or rapid-dissolve tablets that melt in the mouth
• Suppositories, oral liquids, or even lollipops

We know that palliative care is very challenging, but it can also be a very rewarding time. Our pharmacists take great pride in being able to work together with palliative care providers and those patients and families utilizing palliative care. Our pharmacists would be honored if you’d reach out to us to see how we can be of assistance.