Palliative medicine provides clinical leadership, care and support to prevent and relieve suffering for people with life-limiting and life-threatening illness.

• Its diagnostic and therapeutic priorities focus on meeting every individual patient’s goals through shared decision-making with them and those important to them
• It is practiced both as part of multidisciplinary palliative care teams and in partnership with other relevant specialties to deliver individualised, holistic care
• It is a medical specialty recognised by the respective nations’ Royal Colleges of Physicians

Palliative Medicine’s specific expertise is in:
• Assessing and managing physical, psychological and spiritual symptoms and in mitigating distress
• Clinical analysis of and decision-making in complex scenarios, such as when a patient’s clinical needs, preferences and interests are finely balanced and may require skilled application of relevant ethical and legal guidance
• Skilled communication about and co-ordination of care, especially at disease transitions and boundaries between care settings
• Working with partners, colleagues and organisations across multiple sectors to provide excellent multidisciplinary care for patients and those important to them
• Care and support to those important to the patient, including facilitating their bereavement care