Jennifer Temel on How Palliative Care Benefits Caregivers

Jennifer Temel, MD, director of the Cancer Outcomes Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the benefits that palliative care can have not only on patients, but on their caregivers as well.

In a study observing early integrative palliative care for patients with newly-diagnosed advanced lung or GI cancer, Temel found that getting palliative care earlier on gave patients overall better quality of life. Caregivers, who were also observed in the study, had similar outcomes, reporting that their quality of life was better when their loved ones had their symptoms managed in palliative care.